The Whole Foods Effect

[J. Will]

My favourite grocery chain is Highland Farms (well, I've only been in the Mississauga location). It is the mother of all grocery stores. I can't imagine a larger grocery store anywhere that doesn't also serve as a general retailer (Walmart, Target, Meijers, etc.). The selection is just staggering. I don't know how large it is, but it's easily got to be over 80,000 square feet.

[BevoLJ]

Originally Posted by J. Will

My favourite grocery chain is Highland Farms (well, I've only been in the Mississauga location). It is the mother of all grocery stores. I can't imagine a larger grocery store anywhere that doesn't also serve as a general retailer (Walmart, Target, Meijers, etc.). The selection is just staggering. I don't know how large it is, but it's easily got to be over 80,000 square feet.

That is how I feel about the Downtown Austin Whole Foods. I love it for the same reasons you mentioned. It is huge and has everything imaginable and then much much more. lol. It is over 80,000 square feet and takes up the whole bottom two stories of their Corporate HQ building.

And the new Trader Jo's is opening a block from it. Two of my favorite places right next to one another.

[tdawg]

I've been to that Whole Foods in downtown Austin. It is marvelous!

[Double L]

Whole Foods is an example of a private company giving back to the community. I only have two things to say.

1. I do not believe that $4 million dollars in subsidies is a good use of taxpayers dollars. It may provide incentive for them to move to that location but if they don't make a profit will they stay? Waste of money.

2. On this thread we have not talked about the idea opposite from this one that effects cities..."food deserts", neighborhoods too far away from grocery stores. This is also a serious issue affecting cities.

[rs913]

I'm jealous. Here in the Bay Area suburbs, really big stores are pretty much impossible (probably due to NIMBYism and costs). Whole Foods was about to build an 80,000 SF store in south San Jose, but ended up scaling it back to 50,000 SF.

"Food deserts" is an interesting issue. Tesco's "Fresh & Easy" chain has attempted to address this in CA with many of their locations.

[mhays]

I'd much rather live in a place where big properties are too rare and expensive, and they have to stack to go big. With a full-size store plus surface parking, it's not urban. It might be urban if you at least put the parking above/below the store. Ideally you're fitting the store onto a typical block in a tight grid, with parking below and housing or some other use above.

[WIGS]

Originally Posted by J. Will

My favourite grocery chain is Highland Farms (well, I've only been in the Mississauga location). It is the mother of all grocery stores. I can't imagine a larger grocery store anywhere that doesn't also serve as a general retailer (Walmart, Target, Meijers, etc.). The selection is just staggering. I don't know how large it is, but it's easily got to be over 80,000 square feet.

do yourself a favour and check out Wegmans (they range from 80k-140k SF) if you're ever doing cross border shopping in Buffalo. best.grocery store.ever. Period.

[J. Will]

Originally Posted by mhays

I'd much rather live in a place where big properties are too rare and expensive, and they have to stack to go big. With a full-size store plus surface parking, it's not urban. It might be urban if you at least put the parking above/below the store. Ideally you're fitting the store onto a typical block in a tight grid, with parking below and housing or some other use above.

The massive new Loblaws at Queen and Portland in downtown Toronto is on the second floor of a new retail building (not sure if they building has any office or residential as well). The ground floor has numerous smaller retail spaces, while the second floor, I believe, is entirely the Loblaws. I didn't see any parking, but I would assume there is an underground garage accessed from the south side (the main street, Queen, is on the north side of the complex).

Here is the site from Google Streetview (from 2009):

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=toron...143.22,,0,0.31

Next time I'm going to be in that area I'll take my camera and walk around the entire periphery of the development to see if there are other uses and parking. Large supermarkets in Toronto usually have underground parking, so I would assume it has a garage.

The exterior of the store. Courtesy http://www.flickr.com/photos/canmark...n/photostream/



I believe that any store over about 20,000 or 30,000 square feet in an urban environment should be on the second floor or basement floor. Allowing that much space on the ground floor usually means very wide frontages along the sidewalk. That's wasting space that could go to multiple smaller stores. The more interesting retail streets are the ones where most of the storefronts are no more than 15 feet wide, and almost none are more than 30 feet wide. If you put the big box stores on the second floor or basement, they can be huge, but not waste large amounts of sidewalk frontage.

[fflint]

Originally Posted by mhays

I'd much rather live in a place where big properties are too rare and expensive, and they have to stack to go big. With a full-size store plus surface parking, it's not urban. It might be urban if you at least put the parking above/below the store. Ideally you're fitting the store onto a typical block in a tight grid, with parking below and housing or some other use above.

That's the kind of building the newest SF Whole Foods is going in, a block from my apartment. Parking underground and six floors of residential above. They're preparing for demo right now:

[MolsonExport]

Certainly beats the Half Foods Effect. What about the Pseudo Foods (e.g., Fast Food, esp. Taco Hell) effect?

[mhays]

I'd assume that most of San Francisco supermarkets are in stacked complexes by now. Lil ol Seattle probably has a dozen of the full-size variety, most involving housing...