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View Poll Results: Is your downtown well served by grocery stores, markets and pharmacies?
My downtown is well served. 37 37.76%
My downtown is fairly well served. 33 33.67%
My downtown is a food desert. 19 19.39%
My downtown's a food desert, but may improve soon. 9 9.18%
Voters: 98. You may not vote on this poll

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  #181  
Old Posted Oct 15, 2020, 7:30 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Drybrain View Post
Saint John also suffers from the fact that there's only so much money to go around in New Brunswick,
There's plenty of money in New Brunswick - it just sits with two families. Two of the richest families in Canada are based in NB. Income inequality, especially in Saint John, is very high. You either have money or you don't, as you pointed out later in your post. Imagine if Irving actually paid their fair share of property taxes in Saint John on their industrial properties.

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Originally Posted by Drybrain View Post
and it's much more concentrated in Moncton and Fredericton. if Saint John were the urban centre in the province, it would probably be on the upswing, but it's not.
Saint John is the urban centre of New Brunswick, though, if we're looking strictly at built form in urban cores. Saint John's Uptown is certainly on the upswing these days, arguably more-so than the urban downtown cores in either Fredericton or Moncton. Saint John just lacks the current suburban growth that those two cities are currently seeing (partly because Saint John's suburban growth really occurred in the 80s-00s).

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Originally Posted by Drybrain View Post
It's also very American in that what money does exist there concentrates in tony suburbs outside of the city's tax base (Rothesay and Quispamsis). Without Saint John, those suburbs wouldn't exist, but they contribute little financially to the city itself. I can't think of any other city in Canada, large or small, that has quite that stark a divide between urban poverty and suburban wealth.
I can only really think of American comparators for what Saint John's income inequality is like. Detroit is something that is often thrown around as a comparison, mostly by naysayers who think SJ is going to declare bankruptcy any day now. Hamilton is a comparison I hear most often.
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  #182  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2020, 4:10 PM
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West Centretown has been a food desert since 2006 (no idea where the full service grocery store was). They are looking for stop-gap solutions until a full service opens at some point in the future. One approved development in Little Italy has a spot reserved for a grocery store, but that could be years away.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottaw...8fXxk5uuhLm644
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  #183  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2020, 4:59 PM
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New Westminster does very well in the grocery department. Downtown alone has Safeway, Save-on-Foods, and City Avenue Market. And Uptown (arguably our second downtown) has Save-on-Foods and Walmart. It's a very unusual urban format Walmart where the main entrance is at street level, but it's a full-size two-level Walmart Supercentre on the inside. It's on the site of the old Woodward's.

Something I've noticed in Metro Vancouver is the number of standalone fruit and vegetable stands inside malls. Lougheed Town Centre in Burnaby has one of these as a mall tenant (almost right next to Walmart), and there's also one at Royal Square Mall in New West (a mall which includes a Save-on-Foods). I don't ever remember seeing such a thing in Ontario. I think it's great, but why don't these exist in malls in Ontario? Is it a zoning issue?

Last edited by manny_santos; Nov 22, 2022 at 6:17 PM. Reason: Corrected name of grocery store at Royal Square Mall
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  #184  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2020, 5:21 PM
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Originally Posted by ssiguy View Post
I think London will get one fairly soon. The downtown population is soaring but it's currently certainly not a food desert as the Market is there.
I sure hope so. The market isn't a proper substitute for a full-service grocery store, in part due to the cost but also limited hours. I remember trying to go there on a Sunday one time and it was closed. Also they didn't hesitate to shut down entirely for a period of time earlier in the pandemic, and even after they re-opened quite a few vendors chose to remain closed. No idea what it's like now.
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  #185  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2020, 5:27 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Andy6 View Post
Don't we already have 7-Eleven and corner stores that do exactly that?
7-Eleven isn't even close to a substitute for a grocery store. Corner stores, other than stores like Circle K and On The Run, also don't seem to be very common in mid-size cities. Where I lived in London, the nearest grocery store was a Metro and there was no "corner store", there was a single Circle K and another similar convenience store serving a neighbourhood of 12,000 people and it was barely within walking distance. Some of the newer neighbourhoods nearby have absolutely no commercial development within a 30-minute walk, and there is no zoning to permit it.

My neighbourhood in London was actually considered a food desert in UWO's original study on the subject back in 2008, due to the lack of commercial development nearby. While most people think of the area as being high-income, there was a lot of hidden poverty in the neighbourhood that most people elsewhere in the city wouldn't know about, but I knew kids in my elementary school who came from families barely scraping by and living in subsidized housing within walking distance of where I lived.

Last edited by manny_santos; Nov 22, 2022 at 6:19 PM. Reason: Corrected number of convenience stores in my childhood neighbourhood
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  #186  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2020, 5:59 PM
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Downtown Montreal is fairly well served, but a bit uneven. Downtown Centre West, Golden Square Mile and Old Montreal are the least well served overall. McGill Ghetto is the best served given its small area, followed by Downtown West End.

Here is what I can think of by district, not counting places that are really small like large depanneurs or mini grocery stores:
  • Downtown East End (Sherbrooke to Saint Antoine, Saint-Laurent to Jacques Cartier Bridge): 2 - IGA, Metro
  • Downtown Centre East (Sherbrooke to Saint Antoine, Robert Bourassa to Saint-Laurent): 2 -IGA, Fou d'Ici
  • Downtown Centre West (Sherbrooke to Saint Antoine, Robert Bourassa to Guy): 1 -Provigo
  • McGill Ghetto (Sherbrooke to Pine, University to Saint-Laurent): 3 - Provigo, Metro, Eden
  • Golden Square Mile (Sherbrooke to Pine, Atwater to University): 0
  • Downtown West End (Sherbrooke to Saint Antoine, Guy to Atwater): 3 - IGA, Adonis, PA
  • Old Montreal (Saint Antoine to the river, Robert Bourassa to Saint Hubert): 0 with an IGA coming soon (IGA will likely be relatively small)
  • Griffintown (Saint Antoine to the Canal, Robert Bourassa to Guy): 2 - Adonis, Metro
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  #187  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2020, 6:12 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by J.OT13 View Post
West Centretown has been a food desert since 2006 (no idea where the full service grocery store was).
There was a Loeb/IGA at Eccles and Booth. https://ottawastart.com/save-the-booth-street-loeb/
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  #188  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2020, 6:18 PM
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Originally Posted by shreddog View Post
There was a Loeb/IGA at Eccles and Booth. https://ottawastart.com/save-the-booth-street-loeb/
Thanks. Here's the 2007 view soon after it closed.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bo...8!4d-75.710115

Replaced with a women's shelter 5 years later.
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  #189  
Old Posted Jun 6, 2021, 4:48 AM
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Calgary's LaCaille (responsible for the architectural devastation of nearly all of the downtown west end) is restoring their high end restaurant in Eau Claire across from the Peace Bridge, as well as adding a Sunterra grocery store to the building. Sunterra on the main floor and massive restaurant on the second floor.

This will effectively nullify the last small food desert in Calgary's inner city.

https://calgaryherald.com/business/c...medium=twitter
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  #190  
Old Posted Jun 6, 2021, 12:56 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Chadillaccc View Post
Calgary's LaCaille (responsible for the architectural devastation of nearly all of the downtown west end) is restoring their high end restaurant in Eau Claire across from the Peace Bridge, as well as adding a Sunterra grocery store to the building. Sunterra on the main floor and massive restaurant on the second floor.

This will effectively nullify the last small food desert in Calgary's inner city.

https://calgaryherald.com/business/c...medium=twitter
Will that be in the new Concord Building?

On Hull Island, which turns out is served by a few, very small, specialty grocery stores (so not a complete food desert as I thought before) should be getting two new grocery stores within the next 5 years.

There's the W/E II on Eddy and Wellington, which should be getting a Metro (no official announcement on the chain, but Metro appears on the renderings).


https://groupeheafey.com/portfolio/we-2/

Zibi will include a grocery store at the base of a new office building, corner of Laval/Jos Montferrand and Laurier. No word on type of grocery store yet however, it's only a few blocks from the W/E II, so I'm hoping it's not another big chain. I'm hoping to see a zero waste grocery store taking over the space, possibly Nu which is Ottawa based and has two locations in on urban main streets at the moment. It would be a great fit with Zibi and it's strong sustainability goals.


http://elema-ing.com/en/projets/zibi-block-7
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  #191  
Old Posted Jun 6, 2021, 2:06 PM
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Windsor is getting a new boutique grocery store right downtown in a 1920s Art Deco highrise currently being renovated into new apartments.

https://windsorstar.com/news/local-n...t-for-downtown
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  #192  
Old Posted Aug 27, 2021, 6:52 PM
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T&T has reopened a location in central Toronto as of last week, moving into the previous Loblaws City Market location at College & Spadina. This new store is 27K/sqft compared to the 40K/sqft they previously had on Cherry Street.

The lineup was...predictable


Benito at UT

For those unaware, this is very much on the fringe/within Toronto's Chinatown. It won't really be competing with or taking away from the traditional grocery stores along Spadina, though, given that it's a different kind of store with different clientele.
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  #193  
Old Posted Nov 22, 2022, 4:18 PM
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Loblaws opens urban format grocery store in Edmonton's Ice District.

https://retail-insider.com/retail-in...erview-photos/
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  #194  
Old Posted Nov 22, 2022, 5:02 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by manny_santos View Post
Something I've noticed in Metro Vancouver is the number of standalone fruit and vegetable stands inside malls. Lougheed Town Centre in Burnaby has one of these as a mall tenant (almost right next to Walmart), and there's also one at Royal Square Mall in New West (a mall which includes a Safeway). I don't ever remember seeing such a thing in Ontario. I think it's great, but why don't these exist in malls in Ontario? Is it a zoning issue?
They're very few and far in between. I found a fruit and vegetable stand inside the mall south-east of me, which proved very useful considering I was sick at the time. It's in a lower income area, so the prices were quite good. That being said, I never seen any other mall in Ontario have one, although so many malls nowadays demand more high end stores.
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  #195  
Old Posted Nov 22, 2022, 6:16 PM
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Originally Posted by GeneralLeeTPHLS View Post
They're very few and far in between. I found a fruit and vegetable stand inside the mall south-east of me, which proved very useful considering I was sick at the time. It's in a lower income area, so the prices were quite good. That being said, I never seen any other mall in Ontario have one, although so many malls nowadays demand more high end stores.
I think Rideau used to have that, lower level near the garage entrance and the elevator.
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  #196  
Old Posted Nov 22, 2022, 8:00 PM
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If I can hijack for a moment, in case some of you aren't aware, IMO, PC Express is the greatest thing since sliced bread (pardon the expression). Partner that with a free PC Optimum card and here is what I got.

Groceries picked and delivered to my house for $9.95, that's almost cheaper than the gas (exaggeration) They send deals via email/text and I got a $16.00 family size lasagna for free.

I was isolated during the pandemic and wanted to get groceries delivered. I figured $20 bucks would be a reasonable charge. I looked and there was none in my area, I looked at Instacart and it looked like a scam with surcharges etc.

Several months ago I noticed PC Express was in my area, I checked it out, being skeptical the whole time. No hidden charges etc $9.95 simple as that. And until the end of January they reduced it to $7.95.

I ordered a large bag of peanuts and received a small ($6 difference) They have a number you can call, I did call, with no hassle they credited my credit card for $6.

Just wanted folks to know of this great service in case they didn't. It's a real shock when things actually work as they should. BTW, no tipping, they say it right on the website.
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  #197  
Old Posted Nov 22, 2022, 9:41 PM
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I sometimes do PC Express at our Your Independent Grocer store in Timmins. Overall, it's pretty good. They often are out of one or two items I order but that is the case for most grocery stores. There is no extra cost for me because I'm a PC Insiders member. I just call when I get there from the designated parking spots and they put everything in the trunk. They normally do call ahead if they are out of items and will offer alternatives if available and the charges have always been correct.
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  #198  
Old Posted Nov 23, 2022, 1:43 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by elly63 View Post
If I can hijack for a moment, in case some of you aren't aware, IMO, PC Express is the greatest thing since sliced bread (pardon the expression). Partner that with a free PC Optimum card and here is what I got.

Groceries picked and delivered to my house for $9.95, that's almost cheaper than the gas (exaggeration) They send deals via email/text and I got a $16.00 family size lasagna for free.

I was isolated during the pandemic and wanted to get groceries delivered. I figured $20 bucks would be a reasonable charge. I looked and there was none in my area, I looked at Instacart and it looked like a scam with surcharges etc.

Several months ago I noticed PC Express was in my area, I checked it out, being skeptical the whole time. No hidden charges etc $9.95 simple as that. And until the end of January they reduced it to $7.95.

I ordered a large bag of peanuts and received a small ($6 difference) They have a number you can call, I did call, with no hassle they credited my credit card for $6.

Just wanted folks to know of this great service in case they didn't. It's a real shock when things actually work as they should. BTW, no tipping, they say it right on the website.
The Mighty Oaks (https://www.mightyoaks.com/products/...ce/e-commerce/) software is better than the PC Express software. However it is only used by regional independents. Two example of retailers on it are Powell's in NFLD (https://www.powellsnl.ca/) and Stong's in Vancouver (https://express.stongs.com/on-sale/).

I like the independent regional retailers that tend to have a lot of local product. The Loblaws stores pricing is almost always better.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Loco101 View Post
I sometimes do PC Express at our Your Independent Grocer store in Timmins. Overall, it's pretty good. They often are out of one or two items I order but that is the case for most grocery stores. There is no extra cost for me because I'm a PC Insiders member. I just call when I get there from the designated parking spots and they put everything in the trunk. They normally do call ahead if they are out of items and will offer alternatives if available and the charges have always been correct.

What is ironic about "Your Independent Grocer" is it a loblaws banner and on the banners that gives its franchise operators less independence than almost any other franchise banner.

However having access to Loblaws wholesale they tend to get better pricing usually.
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  #199  
Old Posted Nov 23, 2022, 9:24 PM
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Originally Posted by J.OT13 View Post
Loblaws opens urban format grocery store in Edmonton's Ice District.

https://retail-insider.com/retail-in...erview-photos/
It's great - connected to two condo towers and a hotel directly via pedways as well as the greater office pedway network Downtown. Not as large as a typical City Market, but it has all the usual groceries one would need. Lots of take-out lunch options as well considering it is almost surrounded by office workers.
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