Germantown residents dismayed by Fresh Grocer closing

The promise was for a real supermarket. A big, bright oasis of quality and variety in the form of a Fresh Grocer, which residents believed would steady their teetering Germantown neighborhood.

Instead, they got a gloomy, stripped-down version, which suddenly, after almost five years of operation, shut down last month.

Now, at the corner of Chelten and Pulaski Avenues, graffitied cinder blocks bar the store's entrance. The sign out front is faded. Neighbors find added insult in the replacement coming their way: yet another smaller, discount market and a dollar store.

"It feels like a dagger," said Irv Ackelsberg, a longtime resident and lawyer, who joined about 100 Germantown denizens at a community meeting last week to figure out how they could sway the redevelopment. "It sends a clear message that this is a lost neighborhood, and that's not true."

Pat Burns, president and chief executive officer of Fresh Grocer, which has built a reputation for bringing its brand of airy, well-stocked supermarkets to long-neglected Philadelphia neighborhoods, also hoped for something better.

"The store just wasn't making money," Burns explained of the closing. "The facility was just beat up, and we couldn't do the selection we needed to do there. We could not make it work."

Burns plans to replace the old ShopRite building that Fresh Grocer took over with a new Save-A-Lot, a no-frills food chain with items displayed in boxes and where customers bag their own groceries, along with a dollar store.

There's a Save-A-Lot and a Dollar General just up the street, with neighbors unsure if one will close. Either way, Ackelsberg, like many, feels such stores are "just the last thing this community needs."

Germantown has its points of pride. It holds a historic landmark, with battles fought in its streets during the Revolutionary War. Within the diverse, tight-knit mix of race and class, there's a strong library, active churches, a private school, boutique shops, and condos coming soon.

It has also taken its hits. Longtime residents have sharp memories of what used to be, when anchors such as Sears brought stability to Chelten Avenue. Now trash swirls around the commercial corridor of mostly fast-food restaurants, nail salons, and vacancies. One recent morning across from the shuttered Fresh Grocer, a man sat in his beat-up car outside a bar, dancing to his music and puffing away on a cigarette, the smell of marijuana perfuming the air.

"It's the same old junk," native Adrian Templeton, 31, a nursing assistant whose husband works as a locksmith, lamented about the avenue. "We need a real market here."

Even as the city's population grew, Germantown, like other neighborhoods, lost residents. About 1,533 people, 6.3 percent, moved out in the last decade. Neighbors were convinced a full-scale Fresh Grocer would turn things around.

Instead, several who attended last week's meeting said in interviews that the store's floor tiles were dirty, mice ran through the aisles, there was often a bad smell, and offerings sometimes included moldy bread, sour milk, and food beyond its expiration dates. Last October, the city cited the store for violations including mouse droppings and cleanliness problems.

"It was just really, really awful," said Harry Hoffman, 36, who moved into the neighborhood five years ago, pouring $25,000 into renovating his three-story, redbrick home. "There was just this sense of not caring about the store, or the customers," causing Hoffman at one point to organize a boycott.

During the standing-room-only meeting at First Presbyterian church on Chelten Avenue, residents explored their possible leverage through zoning laws, and told of what they'd like to see in the space - a coffee shop, a bookstore, a bakery, a restaurant, a supermarket.

Fresh Grocer still operates five stores in the city, including one in North Philadelphia that Michelle Obama visited last year. Two were financed in part through the state's Fresh Food Financing Initiative, a public-private partnership to increase food outlets in underserved communities.

Burns said he received a $500,000 loan and a $250,000 grant from the program to renovate the Germantown store.

He put the price tag to convert the site - owned by his real estate development company, Pulaski Partners - into a full-scale supermarket, at $20 million. The one the first lady visited cost $15 million.

"I'd love to be able to build a Fresh Grocer there," Burns said. "But at the end of the day if I go bankrupt it doesn't do the community any good."

Burns views the pending 18,000-square-foot Save-A-Lot as a sound "economic deal," part of his plan for a $13 million shopping center. In that, he promised that the community would finally get a market to love.

"It's going to be a brand new store, with state-of-the-art equipment," Burns said. "We're going to make it a really beautiful location."

Burns' ambition hangs in the market's boarded-up window, where a sign reads "Coming Soon . . . Chelten Plaza."

Days before the community meeting, Burns shared a rendering with Ackelsberg and other members of Germantown Community Connection. The sketch shows his plans to convert the old supermarket, a nearby abandoned gas station, and a beer distributor - all owned by Pulaski Partners - into a multi-retail site, funded through $3 million in state bond money and $10 million in his own financing.

Leases for the Save-A-Lot and a Dollar Tree had already been signed. But Burns said for the seven other open retail spaces, "we're willing to work with the community, because we want community support. I want to be a part of the community."

Burns and Grmantown residents are scheduled to meet next week. For some, the gesture comes too late.

"If you can't stop what's happening," Hoffman said, "having an idea of what you would like there is nothing more than a pipe dream."