East Avenue Wegmans: an Open Letter
To: City Planning Dept., Wegmans Food Markets
Dear Ms. Kirkmire & Wegmans:
Last night I attended Wegmans’ presentation to City Council about the proposed replacement store on East Avenue. I would like to thank Wegmans for the presentation, and for clearly making an effort to accommodate neighborhood needs and not just building something that looks like an atrocious “big box” store, something akin to a Wal*Mart or any of the other myriad of terrible strip-mall cookie-cutter buildings.
Wegmans has clearly put some time into developing an exterior for their stores that creates a character for those stores. According to the presentation at City Council, this is supposed to create an atmosphere that reminds us of the village marketplace and agriculture. And now, they want to bring this to my neighborhood. But in doing so, they are contradicting the very essence of what they’re trying to create.
What we already have is a village marketplace, not the façade of one. Sure, it’s not the biggest store out there– but that’s exactly what makes it a neighborhood store. I can run to Wegmans and get in and get out in a few minutes, and although it may occasionally require a search for a parking spot, I think that search takes less time than the added time to cross a larger parking lot and walk the extra distances of a considerably larger store (especially the dearth of useless things between produce and the grocery area.) Wegmans talks about the efficiency of big stores for them, but as a consumer I don’t care about that. I just like the reasonable-size store because it’s efficient for me.
The new store, despite its fancy façade, will otherwise be a big box store. No doubt these are impressive; when I first visited the Pittsford store years ago I was stunned and impressed at the size. But after shopping there a few times, you know what? I hate it. It’s simply too damn big, it’s not convenient, it’s not possible to get through quickly, and given its size it is harder to find employees to help out when you are looking for something. Although the new store won’t be as large as the Pittsford store, it’s still proposed to be 2.5 times the size of the current one, closer in concept to Pittsford than my current store.
The fact that East Avenue is reasonably sized makes it what I like. There are stock people around in the day so I can ask them where stuff is. If I can’t find one of them, it’s not far to the meat counter or front end where I can find someone else. I will truly miss the friendliness, the neighborhood feel that I have from the current store if (when) it is replaced.
I already live near the store, which is wonderful to my life. It is minutes to the store by bike or car, and a walkable distance when the weather is nice. Having easy access to this (and Mayer’s Hardware at Winton and Blossom, ESL at Winton and Main, Flex Gym at Culver and Atlantic, the Wintonaire and Captain Tony’s on Winton, the Flipside Bar & Grill on East Main, among numerous other neighborhood businesses I visit) is one of the things that makes this a great place to live.
The South Wedge is a neighborhood in growth and recovery. With numerous new businesses moving in, people fixing up their houses, South Avenue looking great after repaving and new curbs and similar ongoing projects on Clinton and Mount Hope, it is joining my neighborhood as a thriving area of the city. Inner Monroe Avenue and Park Avenue areas are doing well too; the reworking of the Genesee Hospital is really cleaning up that area.
And so it seems to me that this excuse Wegmans keeps making about needing more parking is a red herring. Sure, it’s a solution to the parking problem– but another solution, and I would argue a better one, would be to put a reasonable-sized store similar to the East Avenue one in the South Wedge. The people there would then have the same benefits I have: convenience, speed, and a good store. Placed correctly, it would attract clientele currently going to the East Avenue store, reducing parking hassles at that venue; it could serve new populations in the Corn Hill and surrounding neighborhoods as well as downtown, and probably more effectively take business from several Tops stores than a bigger East Avenue store would. It would be a preemptive, strategic move against any other store that could move into that area, which would surely take a good share of the market if managed correctly– and given Wakefern Foods (d/b/a PriceRite) recent infiltration into Western New York, I wouldn’t be surprised if they did so. A South Wedge store would even help the environment by reducing the amount of driving necessary for people to get to their neighborhood grocery store– and car-based pollution and inefficiency, from my reading, far outweighs any inefficiencies in the current store’s infrastructure.
So despite Wegmans' insistence that only a big box on East Avenue will do, I continue to be skeptical. I am convinced there are alternative, and better, solutions.
I realize “smaller” stores have their limitations. They may not have the same selection, and there are theoretically limits to what I can get there (though I don’t seem to run into them). For me, the benefits of my reasonably sized store greatly outweigh the advantages of the behemoth that is scheduled to replace it.
Sincerely,
Perette Barella
cc: Elaine Spaul, Vice President, City Council
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