A Supermarket in Limbo

This week Hy-Vee Inc. revealed that its Harding Hills supermarket, the subject of bitter controversy since the company announced last fall that it would close the store, will remain open in its current form for two to three years.

The announcement, which came during a closed-door meeting between Hy-Vee leadership and representatives from Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (CCI), appears to have cooled tensions between community activists and the supermarket chain.

But the ultimate fate of the Harding Hills supermarket in Des Moines remains uncertain.Wrangling over the store began in the fall of last year, when Hy-Vee announced plans to close the store at that location. After months of criticism from community members and a mobilization campaign by CCI, Hy-Vee seemingly reversed course in May, when it divulged plans to keep the store open, albeit after a remodeling that would scale down its operations.

Now the supermarket chain says that any change to the Harding Hills store is years away, citing construction delays on a new store planned for the Beaverdale neighborhood of Des Moines. Yet it remains silent on exactly what services a scaled-down store will offer.

That silence has some Harding Hills residents worried. Shelley Hodges, who owns an apartment building less than two blocks from the supermarket, fears the impact of any changes on the elderly tenants in her building. If the store was to close during remodeling, she said, or a scaled-back store didn’t offer essential services like a pharmacy, she doesn’t know how her tenants would make do. As it stands, “A lot of them are in wheelchairs and they wheel themselves down there and then carry their groceries home in their chair.”

Other community members express concern that a remodeled location will be a glorified convenience store, with the same limited selection and inflated prices that, as studies have found, characterize small, urban grocery stores.

But Chris Friesleben, a spokesman for the company, told the Iowa Independent that prices on essentials will not go up as a result of the remodeling and that a new Hy-Vee will continue to offer daily essentials. “You’re still going to be able to go in there and get your fruits, vegetables, meats, dairy, bread, beer, liquor, everything you need,” she said.

Asked whether the new store would have a pharmacy, she said that a decision will be made after the company gauges the success of a scaled-down Hy-Vee to be built in Lincoln, Neb.

For its part, Iowa CCI continues to oppose any reduction in services and advocates for the Harding Hills location to remain open as a full-service grocery store. But the organization appears to have shelved its demand that CEO Richard Jurgens meet with community members, as Hy-Vee plans to hold an open forum with residents later this summer.

That forum will likely feature many of the same concerns that residents expressed last month at a CCI gathering to discuss the Harding Hills store.

There, community members often veered away from sharp criticism of Hy-Vee to voice long-simmering frustration with the signs of decline in their neighborhood, from blighted storefronts to vacant lots that become centers of crime.

David Stephenson — who, after 40 years of working in factories, had to start driving a truck because manufacturing jobs began to disappear — rattled off the stores that have shuttered since he moved to the neighborhood. “There used to be two up here –one on 6th and one on Euclid. We’ve lost all of the grocery stores on University,” he said.

“We’re working hard to rebuild these neighborhoods but the big companies say there isn’t enough cash-flow,” said Stephenson.

Matthew Covington, an organizer for CCI in Des Moines, took a more optimistic view. Even if Hy-Vee goes forward with a remodeling in a few years, he says, the company “is planning on making a real investment in that community.”

But as with everything in the retail sector, Covington notes, “The overriding message is that nothing is set in stone.”