Edmar's Winds Down
by Micah Maidenberg, Photo by Andrew Bruah

Gem McKinney was not happy with the news that Edmar's Grocery would be closing and replaced by a Dominck's.

Loading bags of food into her car in the store's parking lot just west of the busy intersection of Chicago and Damen Avenues, McKinney said she doen't think the switch is going to be a good change for the neighborhood.

"There're lots of values here. I just bought three cartons of juice for five dollars. You can't do that at a Dominick's," McKinney, recently laid off from her job, said. "It's a family store here. I come for meats and eggs, cheese, a little produce. Dominick's is a bit high."

McKinney thought she might seek out a smaller, locally owned store when Dominick's moved in to "get more food for the money." Other shoppers packing up after a night shopping in the offered similar refrains on Edmar's eventual closure.

An anchor in the West Town neighborhood since the 1960s, Edmar's attracts an unusually diverse set of shoppers from surrounding communities, including public housing residents, Latinos, Ukrainians, Poles, new and longtime homeowners and renters, a younger crowd of hipsters and various visitors passing through the well-traveled cooridor where the store is located. Those interviewed say they patronize Edmar's because of price: milk for $1.79, chicken legs at $.79 a pound and cheaper, ground chuck for $2.19, bread for under a dollar.

Edmar's store owners' decision to retire precipitated the deal to bring in Dominick's, an Oak Brook-based chain with stores across Chicago and its suburbs. A zoning change passed by the City Council in February to accomodate Dominick's larger format and resolution of a labor dispute with the grocery clerk's union were among Dominick's final obstacles to opening a store at the site.

To critics, however, Dominick's move into the community signals that basic services like supermarkets are being priced out of range for working-class people, low-income residents and seniors on fixed incomes, reflecting unabated gentrification of West Town and Wicker Park.

"They're thinking that Dominick's improves things, that you bring in Dominick's, an upscale producer, and you improve the neighborhood," said Peter Zelchenko, a local writer and activist. "More to the point, it ruins the possibility of people who need the neighborhood, who grew up in the neighborhood, to stay there. You've gentrified the groceries."

Zelchenko, who gathered 500 signatures to oppose the Dominick's, said that locally-owned, independent places like Edmar's, Cermak Produce, Shop 'N Save and others offer enormous discounts on food and have the added benefit of circulating profits locally rather than those monies being shipped to the suburbs or corporate headquarters of national chains. He calculates the benefits of such stores outweigh the costs - like their non-union status - and would have liked such a provisioner to take over the Edmar's site. His arguments and petition failed to sway backers of the plan, especially First Ward Alderman Manny Flores, whose district includes the Edmar's.

Flores was instrumental in negotiating with Dominick's over their entry into the community and a spokesperson from the ward office touted benefits gleaned from the company, including working with local non-profit organizations to guarantee local hiring, providing seniors with discount cards at the store and transportation to seniors when construction of the new Dominick's temporarily shutters the site.

Shannon Rooney, the Director of Communication for Alderman Flores, also pointed to the anti-restrictive covenant ordinance passed by the City Council in September that grew out of negotiations with the chain. Now grocers and pharmacies cannot forbid other markets from opening a store if the chain decides to leave a location.

"What came out of this was a city-wide law, the covenant law," Rooney said. "These clauses are anti-competitive. Restrictive covenants are banned. Any company that has a grocery store component can purchase a site and target a market where before people didn't have that option."

The Dominicks's development, Rooney said, is part of the Alderman's plan "to encourage growth and economic development while keeping our character in tact. It's unfortunate that some of our favorite places choose to move on."

Zelchenko, however, criticized Flores for not getting more out of the agreement with Dominick's. While the anti-restrictive covenant ordinance is a victory, Zelchenko sees the Dominick's development as a win for "middle class and upper middle class homeowners, and for the prevailing city powers."

"The city's heart - as Algren put it - these are the people who lose," he said. "They really need a good supermarket."

For more on alternative grocery options in West Town, see Keidra Chaney's recent column on Dill Pickle Food Co-op.