After months of speculation, it now appears that Gilroy’s
community pride has been officially
”
wounded
”
with the recent disclosure that our city is not in the running
(at least right now) for the building of a Trader’s Joe’s specialty
grocery (Red Phone column, April 9).
After months of speculation, it now appears that Gilroy’s community pride has been officially “wounded” with the recent disclosure that our city is not in the running (at least right now) for the building of a Trader’s Joe’s specialty grocery (Red Phone column, April 9). So even though Gilroy is the home of big retail stores such as Home Depot, Lowe’s, Costco, and of course the coming big-daddy of them all – the Super Wal-Mart center, we can’t pull-off getting the likes of a Trader Joe’s. That’s kind of like conquering Mt. Shasta, and falling off Mt. Madonna.
Now I’d think this declaration has got to be rather humbling to our Economic Development Corporation, especially after such big established retail hubs as the outlets and the two new regional shopping centers off the U.S. 101 freeway at Tenth Street are established crowd-drawing places.
Adding insult to injury, apparently TJ’s demographic study shows the local tri-city area of Gilroy, Morgan Hill, and Hollister for their adult populations, do not have at least 60 percent of adults with a college education. And TJ’s didn’t even take into consideration the fact that we have Gavilan College in town.
This harsh evaluation confirms what I’ve suspected for a number of years – that it really does take a college-educated person to shop in a specialty grocery and become a loyal customer. Case in point, I’m a college graduate, and I admit that I shop (occasionally) at the TJ stores in Capitola and Alameda. But put a TJ’s here in Gilroy and I’d become a regular customer at the drop of an organic cracker.
It’s rather amusing that TJ’s website boasts “Neighborhood Grocery Stores with Foods and Beverages from the Exotic to the Basic”, yet us “basic” folks in this tri-city area can’t cut the exotic mustard for our own “neighborhood” TJ store. While the Red Phone write-up indicated TJ’s also prefers 100,000 people to live within a three-mile radius, a review of their store locations makes me wonder about how they arrived at such a population number for their existing northern California stores in Clovis, Napa, and Petaluma in particular.
While TJ’s prefers not to do regional stores according to the article, I’ll guess common-sense marketing dictates that placing a TJ’s into a highly visible facility like the soon-to-be former Wal-Mart building here in town, would be a regional success for TJ’s after all. And, I’ll guess that at least 60 percent of the shoppers visiting the outlets are college educated, and would make regular stops to shop at a TJ’s located near the outlets. So Trader Joe’s, even though you’ve turned us down, don’t ever say you weren’t wanted, especially when a store like Whole Foods comes here and proves me to be right.
Trying to be a loyal Gilroy resident by patronizing local businesses in downtown, for the last month I’ve been going there three times a week for exercise workout, and can’t help notice the daily progress on downtown’s newest retail store construction project at the corner of Monterey Road and Lewis Street next to the old Strand Theater. It certainly will be refreshing to see a new highly visible building in downtown, but the big question remains if this new space will be rented out in a timely manner, and not left to sit-vacant with all of the other empty downtown buildings.
Apparently just having new building space is not enough to lure potential downtown businesses. Consider the fact that the new remodeled building next to Old City Hall is still vacant, some 12 months plus after renovation.
And I’m still of the narrow-minded opinion that downtown Gilroy missed a great opportunity for a catalyst for redevelopment when the city decided not to pursue the idea for building a railroad museum and roundhouse on vacant land north of the Caltrain depot.
And a big on-going “jeer” to the Union Pacific railroad for not being willing to even discuss selling the land to the city or other private investors for such a project. The land still sits vacant, and who knows if, or when, UP will ever do something with it that will complement downtown redevelopment. So much for UP adding to local community goodwill.
