Thursday, October 19, 2006

Holy Grocery, Batman!

Just when I was about to post a rant on how Indiana has more grocery stores per capita than any other state in the country, Marsh decides to face some hard corporate facts and announces closings of 10 locations. Closings including Marsh, LoBill, Village Pantry, Arthurs Fresh Market, and O'Malia's locations in Indiana and Ohio. The stores are scheduled to close by Thanksgiving. How close to home does this hit? For some closer than others. I've often shopped at the O'Malia's on 86th St. Others may miss those Arthur's, but I'll guess they're expensive stores to run. The good news is there's another grocery store on every corner except for downtown (where we still have the crappy O'Malia and the ghetto Kroger.) No plans yet from Kroger to expand on 16th St. What to complain? Blame the King's Park neighborhood association who has halted the grocery company's efforts by asking for expensive and impractical mixed use development.

Meanwhile, the closing Marsh locations?

Marsh - 936 E. Washington, Winchester
LoBill - 990 Chester Blvd., Richmond
LoBill - 3919 Madison Ave., Indianapolis
LoBill - 1033 Indianapolis, Greencastle
LoBill - 190 Old Farm Village, Danville
LoBill - 1107 N. Arlington Ave., Indianapolis
LoBill - 3737 E. Washington, Indianapolis
LoBill - 395 Martin, Greenville, OH
O'Malia - 2342 W. 86th St., Indianapolis
O'Malia - 7405 W. 10th St., Indianapolis
Arthurs - 107 W. Pickwick Drive, Syracuse
Arthurs - 5802 West US 52, New Palestine
Village Pantry, 2005 W. Memorial Drive, Muncie
Village Pantry, 3715 E. Jackson St., Muncie
Village Pantry, 312 N. Phillips, Kokomo
Village Pantry, 4 West Main St., Chesterfield

More from Marsh via Inside Indiana Business.

3 comments:

GeePee said...

You may think the downtown O'Malia's is the Crappy one, but it's like going to Jungle Jim's for us Southsiders. The selection of grocery stores down here is abismal. One either has to venture further south to the suburbs or drive all the way across town to the North to even find goatcheese...or we can go to the downtown O'Malia's. I am so glad it will still be there. Love your blog BTW.

GeePee said...

Hey, you (to mate who used my login) 'abismal' is spelled after 'abyss', 'abysmal'

Hopefully with these Marsh closings some other options may appear to fill the void.

Near us we have the Walmart Neighborhood Market (out in front of once was a CUBS) which is O.K. and the Kroger on East Street which is dirty.

-Jeep

Anonymous said...

I don't think we're going to see any more grocery stores replacing the ones that have closed. Indiana already has more grocery stores per capita than any other state and the reason Marsh is closing locations is that there just isn't enough business to support them.

Sadly, until the mayor's office (using the neighborhood associations) step down from wanting a big mixed use retail development on 16th St., we won't even see a nicer Kroger.