retail dynamics

After 99 years, a local grocery store is closing its doors. Too bad. It's one we shopped at often.

We do still have another small, local, full-service grocery and a small local market best known for its meats. Guess we'll be going to those more now. At least we have those. I know of towns our size that have no local grocery stores, only the global-super-big-box. So far, our smaller stores are able to keep the niche they've carved out around our installation of the global-super-big-box.

The global-super-big-box moved into its new space a few years ago, leaving a large vacant building which they previously used. They continued to pay rent on it, the story is so that it would say empty and thus void of potential competitors at least for a while. Now it won't be empty. New tenants (including a national discount fashion chain) are moving into that space now. Not a fan of strip malls but once they're there, they should have tenants. As one of my students recently said "what's worse than a strip mall? An empty strip mall."