Two and half years of work culminated Thurs. for the South Side of Peoria with a new full-service grocery store at Western and Martin.
The Southside community has been without a store for fresh produce and meat since the last grocer left the same spot. What's now in the location is a hard discount grocery store with a business model that centers on community.
The South Side has been without a supermarket since Aldi’s closed in January 2014. That made way for convenience stores in the area to offer some products, but at premium prices. Yesterday that changed and the Save-A-Lot store opening might have been better described as a celebration, attended by Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis.
“I look out and see the nice little banners that say fresh cut meat, fresh produce; the things that when you go to a grocery store you expect to have," Ardis said. "And we are excited that that’s what we’re going to see down here, daily. Not brought in several days old or anything else. The Quality that this neighborhood demands is the same quality that every other neighborhood in our community demands and deserves.”
Save-A-Lot is a supermarket chain based near St. Louis. It has 1,300 stores in 37 states, including locations in Peoria Heights and Pekin. Another Save-A-Lot in nearby Campustown Shopping Center closed in 2010.
Chon Tomlin is the corporate spokesperson for Save-A-Lot. She says it’s a fairly large company that operates fairly lean, scaling up and down staff to match the demand of each store. Tomlin says the company want’s to get people in the neighborhood working in the store:
“It makes it easier for them to get to work. You don’t have to catch two busses to figure out how you get to work and then you have to call in, you know all those little bitty things that sometimes you forget about," Tomlin said. "But if you live around the corner you walk to work and you walk home and you come back and shop and all of it becomes like one big cycle. We use a zipcode triangulator on our website and it’s Savealot.com/careers.”
Tomlin says it’s as easy as entering a zipcode in the application process and that allows managers to pull in candidates who live closest to the store.
That business model also aims to give back to the community, and stands to be a shot in the arm for the south side economy. Right now, the store has about 10 full and part-time employees and at full staff it’s anticipated the Western Save-A-Lot could employ up to 27 people. About four of the workers are full-time management positions, and the remainder are part-time working nearly full time hours.
To First District Councilwoman Denise Moore, the store opening represents the fulfillment of a primary goal she’s had for more than two years.
“It’s been said that Western was dead, that things were leaving Western, Western wasn’t going to come back to life. Well, I beg to differ. Because down the street you saw Family Dollar open, here you see Save-A-Lot, across the street, from the ground up I might add, you see Dollar General,” Moore said.
Councilwoman Moore says that’s the synergy of business growing on business. She says that sort of business, and commerce, is what her district needs to thrive. Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis agrees. He says Southtown is where Peoria started.
“This is ground zero for our roots. (Applause) If you talk to almost anyone who was born and raised in this community, literally in the last forty plus years, you’ll find probably 90% have family roots in south Peoria and that’s something we all need to be proud of and that’s also a reason you're really seeing a whole lot of emphasis on what’s going on here,” Ardis said.
Ardis says in the last three and a half years he’s attended more ground breakings and ribbon cuttings in Southtown than in the previous eight years he was mayor.
As for Southtown’s newest corporate citizen, Save-A-Lot gave $5,000 in gift cards to two community groups celebrating its grand opening. Corporate store leaders also encouraged the neighborhood to shop the deep discount store’s fresh produce and daily cut fresh meat in an effort to grow its employment base and drive its success.