As is often the case with all the world’s problems, Cohen the Columnist has the solution for the grocery-store crisis in downtown Hartford.
First, of course, is forget the “crisis” stuff. A common characteristic of medium-sized downtowns across the country is the lack of a medium-sized grocer to feed the huddled upper-middle-class masses, locked in their condos, afraid to come out; or the poor folks without the resources or instincts to buy pretentious, high-margin goods to keep the grocer in business. This isn’t a crisis; it’s simply a fact-of-life for urban downtowns that want to pretend that they can offer up suburban-like accoutrements.
A study last year found that in neighboring Massachusetts, in cities such as Boston and Springfield, there were 30 percent fewer supermarkets per person than the national average.
The short life of The Market at Hartford 21 wasn’t really a surprise; the rhetoric about the boom in downtown living in Hartford was more enthusiastic than the reality. The market was stuck in a retail Hell of trying to be more than a middling convenience store, but somewhat less than a suburban chain grocer.
Downtown is an expensive hobby and for a grocer, you either need a large volume of eggs, milk and butter shoppers (downtown Hartford doesn’t have that concentration of nesting population); or you need a cadre of high-end shoppers who will buy high-margin items on impulse (downtown Hartford is not one of those “24-hour-city” places filled with affluent young professionals).
The state’s constipated liquor laws, which prevent grocers from selling whiskey and wine, are also a crippling blow to a downtown grocer joint trying to stock impulse items.
As downtown bowed to the economic realities of the moment, many of the condo projects were magically transformed into rental apartments — and the population that apartments attract (even if they are expensive apartments) are not inclined to do much routine grocery shopping. They are a restless, neurotic lot, those younger apartment dwellers. As a young columnist for Columbia Journalism Review put it in a recent essay for the Christian Science Monitor, why would he want to buy a place and settle down?
“I don’t want to physically anchor myself to a piece of land in the United States, which features a wretched job market, towering national debt, and inept legislators. People need to stay limber and keep their running shoes on for relocation.” Does this sound like someone who would buy a nice chicken breast at The Market at Hartford 21 and chow down over evening television?
No, if I’m ever in the mood to be both benevolent and very wealthy, I’ll open Cohen’s Food Fantasia downtown and show Hartford how to go grocery shopping.
The key to my business plan will be an aggressive catering business; the first thing you’ll see when you walk into Cohen’s will be brochures and business cards, touting the catering business. In a downtown filled with Fortune 500 corporations in shiny office towers, the key to staying in business is not selling apartment dwellers a stick of butter. I’ll cater business meeting for corporate folks who, truth be told, really don’t care what such things cost.
Of course, the unfortunate part will be the grocery shoppers. My answer to them will not be well-stocked shelves. No, out the back door, I will have limos and vans, available for direct service to two or three different, nearby suburban chain food stores.
The downtown cheerleader types will be able to say they bought their groceries downtown, without actually, you know, buying their groceries downtown.
Investors are always welcome.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
