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Now that the Loblaws corporation has decided to close the No Frills Grocery store on Bagot St. A band of community residents have come together to make the space a vibrant community driven place. 'This is how downtowns die' Pending closure of Bagot Street grocery store a blow to area, councillor says When the downtown no frills grocery store closes in two months, it will be not just a blow to the neighbourhood, the councillor representing the area says, it will be another blow to the entire downtown. Loblaws confirmed this week that it plans to shut the Bagot Street supermarket in mid-January, around the time it opens its new No Frills superstore in the growing commercial strip at the corner of Division Street and Dalton Avenue. Councillor Rob Hutchison, who represents the King's Town district where the market is based, said the loss of yet another amenity to which people in the downtown can walk is part of a troubling pattern. "They're talking about closing schools, we've seen banks close, now we've lost this supermarket," Hutchison said. "This is how downtowns die. "The downtown is doing fairly well now, but unless we reverse this trend we're seeing, we could end up with a hollow core." The store at 600 Bagot St. is more than 40 years old, run down and small by the standards of today's supermarkets, but it has been the local grocery store for generations. Even Loblaws calls it a strong market, but says the physical shortcomings of the aging building make it economically unfeasible to renovate. Hutchison said it's a "tremendously disappointing" situation. "There are some people who moved into this area based on the premise that there was a grocery store there that they could walk to, and now they've lost that." Anti-poverty activists say they are saddened to see an affordable supermarket move to a part of the city less accessible to many of its current customers. "It's a bit different than it was when the IGA store on Division Street closed - No Frills' prices were not unreasonable, and a lot of people in that area have come to depend on it," said George Biro of the Kingston Coalition Against Poverty. "I don't know what we can do, though. It's a commercial decision, and maybe they think they have a captive market in that area that will follow them to the new store." Biro noted that the community supermarket has its own way of running things that is quite different from the practices of suburban superstores. It recognizes its unique customer base and understand that many of its customers don't have access to a vehicle. "That store allows customers to take the carts home," he observed. "They don't mind. They took the coin slots off them and people can take their groceries home in a cart and they send someone around the neighbourhood at night to collect the carts." Sandy Singers, director of the Partners in Mission Food Bank, suspects losing No Frills will have a huge impact on the low-income families in that area. Singers deals with the industry to solicit donations of non-perishable food and acknowledges that it is a tough industry and that market leaders such as Loblaws are looking for the efficiencies of scale that come with large, modern operations that can offer a full line of grocery and non-grocery items under one roof. "The margins are very, very tight in the grocery industry, and everyone is feeling the pinch." When the Kingslake IGA closed, the Kingston Economic Development Corporation started a shuttle bus service on Fridays to take people from the Rideau Heights neighbourhood downtown to shop at the Food Basics. Both Singers and Biro said that is something that Loblaws should consider doing when it shutters the Bagot Street store. The ultimate fate of the store and the surrounding land is not known, but if Loblaws decides to sell the land, Gary Bennett, the former mayor of Kingston whose family operated grocery stores on the block for four generations, said it could present an interesting opportunity for the area. The company owns the building, an adjacent parking lot and land across Bagot street that was once home to a distribution warehouse and is now used as a parking lot and community garden. "There will be a great opportunity for redevelopment in that area of the urban core," said Bennett, who also viewed the closing with some sadness. "There has been a grocery presence there for nearly 100 years - I don't even think the streets there had been surveyed when the first store opened," said Bennett, noting the original Bennett's opened at the corner of Bagot and Charles streets in the 1920s, and the current store was built in the mid-1960s. "At the time, it was a considerable investment, and it was considered a big grocery store by the standards of the day," said Bennett, whose brother, Dave, operates the Bennett's Valu-Mart in Pittsburgh Township. "I look back to the 1950s and 1960s, and I think that just about everyone in town worked for my family at one point, bagging groceries and taking them to people's cars back in the days when supermarkets offered that service. "You were either doing that or delivering the Whig-Standard - those were the two jobs that it seemed everyone in the city did at one point or another." He said the business is one of a dying breed of locally owned neighbourhood supermarkets that used to exist in cities the size of Kingston. "It has been a neighbourhood institution as well as a community institution for as long as I can remember," said Bennett. "Its closing will affect a lot of families, because a lot of people in that area do not have access to transportation to get to the new store. "Unfortunately, with the new business model being adopted by Loblaws and other companies, you're seeing them leave neighbourhoods behind."