Stephen Vance, Editor
Many Meaford residents were both shocked and saddened upon hearing the news this week that Meaford’s only downtown grocery store, Foodland, will be closing in August.
When I first saw the new Foodland location being constructed in Thornbury, my first concern was how that would impact the Meaford location and the residents who rely on it, and sadly I was right to have been concerned.
To some it’s just another grocery store, an older, smaller, and less shiny store than what can be found a short drive away in larger communities, but for others, it is an important, accessible, affordable, and walkable grocery outlet in the heart of Meaford’s most densely populated area. Many of the customers are elderly residents from the downtown area, or those without vehicles who find it difficult or expensive to find their way up the hill to the only other grocery outlet in town, and those residents will experience some difficulty and frustration when Foodland finally closes on August 6.
I personally know how valuable the Foodland store is as it is within walking distance of my own apartment, and I shop there regularly. Often when I visit the store the small parking lot would be virtually empty, but inside would be several shoppers, many of them seniors, gathering their weekly groceries and walking or biking them home.
The media contact for Sobeys Ontario cheerfully told me that “Sobeys Inc. is still very much committed to the Meaford community, and will continue to serve customers through our Thornbury Foodland, Markdale Foodland and Collingwood Sobeys stores.” Clearly they have little understanding of the demographics of their Meaford customer base, and while it’s true that some will make the trek to Thornbury or Collingwood, a large number of their soon-to-be former customers don’t have the luxury of venturing beyond their own community to buy their groceries, and even the trip to the Valu-mart can be logistically frustrating, or even cost-prohibitive for some.
As much of a loss as the closure of Foodland will be for many in the community, we can’t forget that some 20 of our friends and neighbours will be out of work come August. Sure, the Sobeys corporation says that some of the employees have been offered jobs at other locations – outside the municipality, but corporations always try to soften the blow with those kinds of statements. In a small community, having 20 residents suddenly unemployed is a significant hit, and my thoughts are with every one of those employees as they attempt to find alternate employment in a small town with little to offer in the way of quality jobs with decent pay.
As for the Deputy Mayor’s suggestion that the building might be a potential candidate to house the Meaford Public Library which has been in need of a replacement for its crumbling building for as long as I’ve lived here, it doesn’t make much sense to me.
This is a community that for the past decade has been rightly obsessed with trying to find ways to generate new economic development, to find ways to bring jobs to this community, so why would council want to take a prime piece of commercially zoned real estate and convert it into public use, losing valuable property tax dollars and the potential for new jobs in the process?
The property is located on the corner of one of only two major intersections in the downtown business district, it serves as an anchor retailer, and a gateway of sorts to an already small shopping area; it currently employs 20 members of our community, and it certainly seems to meet the important criteria of location, location, location for a commercial property, so why would we want to have our municipality attempt to acquire the property in order to turn it into a public facility with no new employment opportunities?
As much as I love our library, and as much as I agree that the library desperately needs a new building, I think it would be foolish to take what is arguably one of the most valuable commercial properties in a municipality desperate for economic development and employment opportunities and turn it into a public facility with zero opportunity for the creation of new jobs or stimulating our fledgling economy.
To live in a small town often requires compromise, and it sometimes means dealing with some harsh realities like corporate decisions made hundreds of kilometres away to close a small town grocery store, but before we proceed too far in exploring the potential for the property to house a library, how about we have our economic development officer live up to the title and actually attempt to recruit an independent grocer, or if that proves impossible, some other sort of commercial or industrial enterprise to acquire the property and bring some of those 20 jobs back into the community?
