If you were part of a November exit study at City Market, you may recall staff members asking where you live. You might have wondered if the co-op was planning to follow you home. The answer is yes, sort of. General manager Clem Nilan has announced that the co-op board plans to open a second neighborhood location in the greater Burlington area.
G2G Research Group, a California-based consulting company that specializes in market research for co-ops, identified the need for a second store. It mentioned City Market’s “very high sales per square foot performance level” and parking issues as indicators that shoppers might have a better experience if they weren’t all packed into one location. The good news, says Nilan, is that the study confirmed Burlington’s ability to seamlessly absorb another store. Two less crowded stores with easier parking, instead of one congested one, looked like the obvious way to go, says Nilan.
The researchers examined the micropopulations of the Archibald Street area in northern Burlington, downtown Winooski, and the Pine Street corridor in the South End to see which could best sustain a new market. According to Nilan, Pine Street won out, but that doesn’t mean they’re shopping South End real estate just yet. “We have to really begin our internal process,” he explains. “We work with a board of directors. We have to vet a project against our policies.”
Nilan says that he and the board are still at the very beginning of the road toward expansion and he’s not willing to name even a vague opening date. “I used to be in the restaurant business for years,” he says. “Things always take more time than you think they will. We haven’t even gotten to the point of seriously looking at different sites.”
Whatever they settle on, Nilan says that because it will be in a neighborhood, the new spot will likely be smaller than the current 16,000-square-foot store, but will be at least 5000 square feet. Nonetheless, he explains that it will be a full-service co-op, with all or most of the amenities shoppers have come to expect from City Market.
This article appears in The Love & Marriage Issue 2012.
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A second location needs to be in Winooski. There are too few options for healthy food in Winooski. I live in the South End and I’d love the convenient access, but for Winooski, access to quality food is a social justice issue.
I know the original site in Winooski didn’t work, but there are other sites. Please re-evaluate Winooski.
Woo-woo Winooski!!!
How on earth did Pine Street win over Winooski? Pine already has decent grocery options, including a Shaws and Price Chopper not too far away. Winooski has nothing, and I am sure their downtown residents would swarm into a market if one was built.
i would love to see this in the old theater in the NNE, but it would be right across the parking lot from hannaford’s. maybe a bit closer in… to draw from the ONE and the new Burlington College campus…? but then you might as well be at the main location.
we could really use a closer option for local and organic, and a small cafe for lunch / prepared foods would be welcome…
but as a member (and a family that does 90% of our shopping there) i think the coop needs to open where there will be the greatest return on the substantial investment in spreading the good food and good work that they do… so i could see pine st. (competing with fresh market though on a smaller scale) drawing in folks from shelburne / s. burlington. as a potential better fit, and definitely more ‘urban’ than the burbs out here in the NNE.
I am a UVM grad student (former undergrad, as well) and I shop a lot at City Market for the prepared foods although I go to Price Chopper for basic house hold items. Just became a member 3-weeks ago. I would think that something in the NNE or Winooski would be better location than Pine Street. Winooski has lots of empty space ready to be filled.