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Grocery store to close at the end of the month
By Christine D’Agostino
Register-Star
May 20, 2008
GREENPORT — The Save-A-Lot grocery store, located in the Columbia Shopping Center on Fairview Avenue, will close its doors for the last time on May 31, according to a sign posted on the store’s entrance.
“Thank you for your past patronage,” the sign reads.
The store’s manager, who declined to give his name, deferred all questions regarding the closure to Save-A-Lot’s corporate office in St. Louis, Mo.
According to customer Joan Horgan of Hudson, who says she’s been shopping at Save-A-Lot for the past six years, one of the store’s cashiers started a petition to keep the store open.
When contacted by the Register-Star, this cashier also referred all queries to Save-A-Lot’s corporate office, and wished to not be identified.
Horgan says she is friendly with the cashier through shopping at the store at least twice a week. When she viewed the petition on the morning of May 11, it had 147 signatures on it.
“This was at 11 a.m., and it had only started that day,” Horgan said.
According to Horgan, the cashier was only asking for shoppers’ names and town.
“She wanted to show management that people come from all over to shop,” Horgan said, noting that locations she saw on the petition included Schenectady and Ballston Spa.
“There aren’t a lot of reasons to come here,” she added, “except for the strip of stores” along Fairview Avenue.
Save-A-Lot is located next to the spot that had been occupied by Aubuchon Hardware up until March 3, when it abruptly closed. Aubuchon’s owners said at the time that the store closed due to a lack of sales.
Several calls to Save-A-Lot’s corporate communications department regarding the reasoning behind the impending closure went unanswered, though Horgan wonders whether it’s a reaction to the Widewaters’ project being constructed on Fairview Avenue, just north of Save-A-Lot.
That project is Greenport Commons, a 500,000-square-foot development that will eventually house a Wal-Mart Supercenter, as well as other as-yet-unnamed retail stores and restaurants. The two closures at Columbia Shopping Center may lead some to wonder whether Greenport will be able to sustain these new businesses.
“Maybe they’re assuming there’s no point in staying,” Horgan speculated.
Calls to Greenport Town Supervisor John Rutkey Sr. were not immediately returned as of press time.
As a longtime customer, Horgan is distressed about the impending closure.
“Everyone I know goes there,” she said. “They have really affordable prices.
“It’s disconcerting because Save-A-Lot is a basic ‘go and get most of your food’ kind of place,” she continued. “A lot of families go in there to buy staples for the month on a regular basis.”
The closure is likely to hit many loyal shoppers in a place where they’re already hurting: the wallet.
“I know my food bill would double immediately, because there’s no alternative,” Horgan said. “We have no big-box stores here.”
“There are two large grocery stores in Hudson, Price Chopper and Shop-Rite. They compete with each other,” she explained, adding that those stores offer a “different type of shopping,” where name brands are sold. According to the “Our Business Model” page on Save-A-Lot’s Web site, the company has its own exclusive brands, as opposed to national name brands.
“It’s a staple store,” Horgan said, referring to canned and boxed items, as well as produce and meats. “You’d go to other stores for specialty things.”
Horgan says the Save-A-Lot store is small and people-oriented, and that’s another reason why she enjoys shopping there.
“They know their customers,” she said, and on more than one occasion management has special-ordered an item the store doesn’t normally carry for her.
“There’s none other like it,” she said.
According to a fact sheet available through the company’s Web site, Save-A-Lot has more than 1,150 stores operating in 40 states. It is the fifth largest chain in the nation under a single banner. The company refers to its business model as an “edited assortment format,” which essentially means that stores carry only the most popular grocery items.
Once the Greenport store closes, those who still wish to shop at Save-A-Lot will have to head north. The nearest store is located just under 30 miles from Greenport, in Menands. There are also stores in Rotterdam and Amsterdam. Shoppers who came to Save-A-Lot from southern Columbia County may be out of luck; the store search tool on the company’s Web site shows no stores south of Greenport within a 200-mile radius.
To reach reporter Christine D’Agostino, please call 518-828-1616, ext. 2266, or e-mail cdagostino@registerstar.com.
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