Grocery chain's cutbacks won't affect Midtown site
Despite Kash n' Karry's announced retrenchment, plans for a 22nd Street S store are moving ahead.
By SHARON L. BOND
Published January 18, 2004
ST. PETERSBURG - The Kash n' Karry grocery store planned for Midtown is still a go, even though the grocery chain is retrenching elsewhere. And local developers say the new grocery also won't be affected by the Wal-Mart Supercenter, the mammoth discounter that will rise about 30 blocks to the southwest.
In fact, yellow machines were chewing up trees on the Wal-Mart site at 34th Street and 34th Avenue S last week. At the Kash n' Karry location, nothing was happening on site. The block at 18th Avenue S and 22nd Street stood quiet, cleared but for half a dozen big trees and a little trash.
Off site, it is busy.
"We're working our butts off. We're in the real estate side of this thing now," said Larry J. Newsome, head of Urban Development Solutions, the development company that plans to build a 38,000-square-foot Kash n' Karry anchoring a new strip shopping center.
"We're working getting our financing tied down, and we are getting the lease finalized. We expect to be before the EDC (Environmental Development Commission) in February," Newsome said.
His company was chosen by the city in December to develop the project. The hearing before the EDC starts the official city approval process of the exact plans.
The $4.9-million endeavor, called the Queensboro Project, is the answer to a push by city officials and others trying to improve the quality of life in Midtown, an economically disadvantaged area of the city. Midtown, most of which is south of Central Avenue, is home to some of the city's poorer residents. It has only one chain grocery at its northern edge.
The St. Petersburg City Council is spending more than $1-million of public money to assemble the land for the shopping center. So getting Kash n' Karry is a big deal.
The grocer, based in Tampa, last week announced a retrenchment and retooling process that will close 34 stores in Florida. It does not affect the Midtown project, and the city quickly issued a statement to that fact.
"I wasn't in too much of a panic. If it were going to affect us, then they would have been notified differently," said Deputy Mayor Goliath Davis.
Newsome said he knew the chain was making decisions about repositioning itself in the market and redoing its image. But he had not worried about the Midtown project. Both he and Davis said Midtown could get a better store with the chain deciding to concentrate its money on new stores and renovating those that remain open.
"If I were a store, and I wanted to do some things better, to me doing fewer and better makes a lot more sense," Newsome said.
Wal-Mart does not worry Newsome because he said Kash n' Karry heard that it was coming and redid its market study for the Midtown store.
"They have literally taken the impact of Wal-Mart coming into the numbers," he said. "I don't think Wal-Mart has any effect on us."
With Kash n' Karry's announcement of store closings last week, some retail analysts put the blame for lost sales on the arrival of the Wal-Mart supercenters, which have full-service supermarkets.
Davis said some shoppers prefer regular grocery stores.
"I've heard some people don't want to go to Wal-Mart because it is too big," he said. "Wal-Mart will have its constituents and Kash n' Karry will have its constituents."
Among those in Midtown will be residents who have no transportation. That is why it has been so important to get a chain grocery store in the middle of the area rather than at the edge.
"You will have walk-up clientele at Kash n' Karry that won't go to Wal-Mart. Transportation is a big issue," Davis said.
Newsome is not yet trying to fill the other stores at the Queensboro Project and will be asking residents what they want.
"I'm talking to two banks," he said, declining to name them. "I want to be certain I've got the bank in the fold." After that, Newsome said he wouldn't mind seeing a clothing store, hair products company or laundry.
If the Queensboro Project wins city approvals in February, time will be needed afterward to get working drawings and select a contractor. So it may be three months before the buildings start coming out of the ground, Newsome said.
Both Kash n' Karry and Wal-Mart probably will be opening about the same time in early 2005.
