^ Yeah I was there this weekend and it was a mad house. I'm hoping some of it was due to it being opening weekend, but we'll see. They were pretty much out of carts when I was there - I had to walk back out of the store and get one from someone who had just finished putting their groceries into their car.

 

It did seem to have a lot of the same old problems, though, mostly trashy clientele and not enough staff to keep up with them. I noticed that someone left one of those big 3lb tubes of ground beef sitting out by the pasta - I guess they changed their mind and just left it. Who does that? Not a whole lot Kroger can due about that, aside from babysit everyone in the store at all times. I also expect some sort of locks or chaperone or a complete removal of some of the self-serve components very quickly. People were treating the nuts/trail mix/candies bins like free samples, and they're right in front of the entrance. There was a huge bouncer-looking guy manning the growler station.

Part of the problem is that people were spending a lot more time in the store than usual simply checking it out.  So the parking lot spaces weren't turning over as quickly as they will in a month or so. 

 

Plus, the layout is very unusual and quite obviously designed to segregate people who eat actual food from people who eat frozen pizzas.  No coincidence that the "diabetes care" aisle (yes, an entire aisle!) is right next to the ice cream and frozen food. 

 

 

Is the ingredients section really small?

Is the ingredients section really small?

 

Isn't like the whole grocery store the ingredients section?

As an outsider, is there anything particularly innovative or "urban" about this store? There's a very laudatory thread over on city-data full of people gushing over it like they've reinvented the wheel or it's the 2nd coming of christ, but everything I've seen looks very standard for a nice, newly-built Kroger. Is it the mezzanine level seating/bar area? I feel like lots of groceries are doing that now, even in very suburban areas.

No there is no innovation other than turning a routine shopping trip into a spectacle. 

They even had a guy on stilts juggling yesterday

When it comes to Cincinnati, Kroger sure does like to pretend that they don't understand how to make an "urban format" store. However, take a look at this Kroger in Grosse Pointe, Michigan:

 

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Grosse+Pointe,+MI/@42.3898368,-82.9169305,3a,75y,289.1h,91.47t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sWzpBCcLuSqjynQb7AluKmg!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo1.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DWzpBCcLuSqjynQb7AluKmg%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D10.655934%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656!4m5!3m4!1s0x8824d5dcb64a8b8f:0x4ed544d15caf0bd1!8m2!3d42.3861485!4d-82.9118591!6m1!1e1

 

Why can't we have one like this here?

As an outsider, is there anything particularly innovative or "urban" about this store? There's a very laudatory thread over on city-data full of people gushing over it like they've reinvented the wheel or it's the 2nd coming of christ, but everything I've seen looks very standard for a nice, newly-built Kroger. Is it the mezzanine level seating/bar area? I feel like lots of groceries are doing that now, even in very suburban areas.

 

No. Kroger previously planned on building an actual "urban" store at this location but it got more and more watered down over the years. What we ended up with is a standard suburban Kroger plopped down at this urban location. The only unique thing about it is that it has a partial second floor with a bar...but it's not a true two-story grocery store with shopping on both levels. Apparently this is due to the fact that the Cincinnati-Dayton division of Kroger has no willingness to take risks and insists on using the same design for every store within their region, despite that fact that other regional divisions of Kroger are doing much more innovative store designs in urban areas.

When it comes to Cincinnati, Kroger sure does like to pretend that they don't understand how to make an "urban format" store. However, take a look at this Kroger in Grosse Pointe, Michigan:

 

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Grosse+Pointe,+MI/@42.3898368,-82.9169305,3a,75y,289.1h,91.47t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sWzpBCcLuSqjynQb7AluKmg!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo1.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DWzpBCcLuSqjynQb7AluKmg%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D10.655934%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656!4m5!3m4!1s0x8824d5dcb64a8b8f:0x4ed544d15caf0bd1!8m2!3d42.3861485!4d-82.9118591!6m1!1e1

 

Why can't we have one like this here?

 

Because of Cincinnati's unofficial motto: "Just because it works there, doesn't mean it will work here."

The "urban" components seem to be the setting, the smaller format store (that still has most of the amenities of their new 100,000+ square foot mega-Kroger stores), and more grab and go type foods geared toward individuals instead of families. The two-story component is pretty insignificant because there's no actual shopping on the second floor (though those cart escalators can cost about $400,000 each, so I forgive them for this one).  The site design is not urban at all, though it is definitely an improvement over the old store that was, perhaps, one of the worst site plans I've ever seen for a retail location.

You have to wonder if they didn't put an awning on this one in order to avoid the breezeway loitering that existed at the old one.  If so, it appears to be having little effect. 

...those cart escalators can cost about $400,000 each...

 

I've seen stores where they just installed an oversized elevator instead.  They take up less space, and you need an elevator anyway, so just make it all glass with nice big doors (possibly even double-sided) and that takes care of it.  Somewhere in Europe (Prague or Germany maybe?) I was in a 2-level grocery store and the escalator was actually just an inclined ramp with grooves in it that would catch the grooved wheels on the shopping carts: 

They're basically an inclined moving sidewalk.  The weight of the cart and friction keeps it from rolling (sometimes the carts have brakes or magnets), and when it gets to the end the scoops between the grooves would kick the wheels out.  The advantage is that they let you stay with your cart, but they also need to be at a shallower angle, so there's more wasted space underneath and it takes a big chunk out of the 2nd floor plate.

Or you can always head to the Menards in Evendale to experience the inclined ramp.  It is pretty cool, yet somewhat slow.

Or you can always head to the Menards in Evendale to experience the inclined ramp.  It is pretty cool, yet somewhat slow.

 

Was going to mention that. Is it the only two-story Menards? The land there could have easily supported a one-story store, yet they went with two.

^Many of the older Menards stores in Wisconsin are two level.

When you make it two levels though, the store can miss out on sales as people decide that they don't want to go back upstairs for something they thought of buying after they went downstairs. They just do without.

They miss out in these huge single-floor stores too, for things that are on the other side of the store.  It also doesn't mean they don't buy it next time. 

I was visiting family out in Liberty Township last weekend and heard that Kroger is about to build a new Marketplace store out there and abandon their existing regular store which is not even that old, and I'm sure was renovated within the last 5 years anyway.

 

It just blows my mind that Kroger has such a blatant dichotomy of stores in the Cincinnati area. Suburban Kroger stores get replaced or remodeled every 5 to 10 years. Urban stores get neglected and then closed because we're told they're not profitable.

Well I highly doubt the walnut hills Kroger was profitable. Low income residents  don't exactly have a lot of spending power...not saying it's right, but it's just the reality, especially when the main core of Cincinnati residents are extremely impoverished.

The stores just don't make money unless people buy a ton of extra food that gets thrown out. Or they get to sell a lot of prepared food.

Taprooms are wrecking every other aspect of the economy since they are getting half of everyone under 35s money.

So I swung into town, and managed to in my limited time check out EMC which looked like another attempt at an upscale urban market.  After a few poorly thought out start ups (that little market in downtown which carried only a handful of produce) this is the real deal!  Its exactly the kind of pedestrian oriented upscale Market OTR needs and Chicago has had for years, I'd high recommend swinging by there and they even are open until 8pm on most days :) - they are right off the streetcar as well.

 

http://www.citybeat.com/food-drink/the-dish/article/20862562/emc-fills-a-grocery-niche-at-findlay-market

 

Well I highly doubt the walnut hills Kroger was profitable. Low income residents  don't exactly have a lot of spending power...not saying it's right, but it's just the reality, especially when the main core of Cincinnati residents are extremely impoverished.

 

Have you been in line behind someone using an EBT card? They usually have at least an entire cart full of food. I've been in line behind people with two entire full carts full of food, paying with EBT.

 

Unless they're able to mark-up certain things more, that higher-income people tend to buy - making those stores more profitable, I don't understand how food stamps don't at least level the field for urban locations.

 

 

Well I highly doubt the walnut hills Kroger was profitable. Low income residents  don't exactly have a lot of spending power...not saying it's right, but it's just the reality, especially when the main core of Cincinnati residents are extremely impoverished.

 

 

 

Have you been in line behind someone using an EBT card? They usually have at least an entire cart full of food. I've been in line behind people with two entire full carts full of food, paying with EBT.

 

 

That's because they can only make it to the grocery store once a month due to transportation and time concerns. The middle-class/wealthy three-time-a-week stop-in for 3-5 items on the way home from work is completely out of the question for them.

GUYS IT'S HAPPENING

 

Kroger is building a downtown store at Court and Walnut. It will be in the base of a 18 story mixed-use development that will also include a 555 space parking garage, 139 apartments, and a bar and food hall on the second floor.

 

here's the PR release they sent us:

 

Kroger and the City of Cincinnati announced that Kroger is building a new grocery store in downtown Cincinnati. Kroger will relocate an existing smaller store on Vine Street to a new site less than half a mile away at the corner of Court and Walnut Streets. This new store will be one block away from Kroger’s General Office headquarters building on Central Parkway and Vine Street in Cincinnati.

 

Kroger’s love of Cincinnati started 134 years ago, when Barney Kroger opened his first store – a downtown store – on Pearl Street near the Ohio River. This new store is another example of Kroger’s commitment to our hometown Cincinnati, to our customers and neighbors, and to our associates who live and work there. Every day across the company, we Feed the Human Spirit, making the world a better place one associate, one customer and one community at a time.

 

The new Kroger store will be part of a $90.5 million, 18-story mixed-use development that will also include a 555-space parking garage and 139 market-rate apartments. At 45,000 square feet, the new store will be twice the size of Kroger’s Vine Street location, offering additional fresh food options, including fresh prepared meals, and a greater variety of products to downtown shoppers. The grocery store will be located on the first floor of the new structure, while a bar and food hall, featuring several local vendors and restaurant-style seating, will open on the second floor, alongside the grocery’s beer and wine section. Kroger is investing $19 million for the new store.

 

Above the grocery store, the 555-space parking garage will serve a combination of Kroger customers, apartment residents, and the general public. The Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC) will serve as developer on the project and will manage the day-to-day operations of the garage, which will be owned by the City of Cincinnati, upon completion. North American Properties, NorthPointe Group, and Rookwood Properties will develop, own and manage the residential portion of the new development, located above the parking garage.

 

The City of Cincinnati will contribute $8.5 million to the project in the form of a grant for construction of the garage. Approximately $2.5 million in Federal and State New Markets Tax Credit equity will also be utilized solely to fund the construction of the grocery store.

 

An estimated 52,000 square feet of vacant street-level commercial space and 190,000 square feet of vacant land currently exist within two blocks of the project site, and for several years, the lack of accessible transient parking has limited commercial activity in the area. The new development will serve as a catalyst to the Court Street corridor, which had been considered a “dead zone” before recent efforts to activate the area, ultimately connecting the Central Business District to Over-the-Rhine. By increasing the number of parking spaces in the area and adding a strong anchor tenant, pedestrian activity will increase, helping restaurants and retailers in the area to thrive.

 

The new store will also bring new jobs to the area, including approximately 160 permanent positions at the grocery store, and 1,200 temporary construction jobs. As part of the relocation, all 60 associates at the Vine Street store will be offered employment at the new location or other Cincinnati-area stores.

 

The Vine Street location will continue to operate until the new store is completed. Once the new store opens, Kroger will donate the Vine Street store to 3CDC. The non-profit developer will then redevelop that property, which is located in the 1400 block of Vine Street – an area in desperate need of improvements.

 

Construction on the new mixed-use development will begin this summer, with completion expected mid-2019.

now everyone can move on from the Kroger hates downtown talk...

Honestly, I'm still putting the odds of this development at 50/50.  Just because they've announced the development does not mean that it's for certain going to be built.

I'm just stoked AF.  it will be one block away from two streetcar stops. It will get rid of that giant awful parking lot by the County building, filling in one of the worst gaps  in the northern end of downtown.  It's going to add a ton of energy and traffic to Court Street. It's a taller building than I thought we'd get for this part of town. It's going to drive more daily usage of the streetcar. Ahhhh so good.

 

the only bad thing is that it will take until 2019 for construction to be complete.

I hope they add a Port Republic taproom.

Let's keep discussion specifically related to the Central Parkway & Walnut store in this thread:

 

https://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,30893.0.html

The Fresh Thyme grocery store in Anderson Township has closed. Not sure how their Newport and Oakley locations are doing.

I like Newport Pavilion. I shopped there when I lived in Mount Adams. I still do now that I live in Fort Thomas. There's Target, TJ Maxx, Chipotle, Chick Fil A, Michael's, Aldi, and Kroger. The Aldi is usually really quiet, which is great. The stores are newer and spacious.

 

Downside - the traffic there is insane on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. There is a really bad intersection near the Chick Fil A and Fresh Thyme - seen an accident and almost been hit twice - avoid it if you can!

Newport Pavilion's layout is a disaster. You would think that for a brand new, auto-oriented shopping center, they would at least be able to design the roads in a way that efficiently moves cars. The configuration around the Chick-fil-A and Chipotle/BW3 plaza especially makes no sense.

I like Newport Pavilion. I shopped there when I lived in Mount Adams. I still do now that I live in Fort Thomas. There's Target, TJ Maxx, Chipotle, Chick Fil A, Michael's, Aldi, and Kroger. The Aldi is usually really quiet, which is great. The stores are newer and spacious.

 

Downside - the traffic there is insane on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. There is a really bad intersection near the Chick Fil A and Fresh Thyme - seen an accident and almost been hit twice - avoid it if you can!

 

Its terrible design for being within sight of Cincinnati's downtown.  Travel outside of the Cincinnati region a bit and you'll see why...

I'm convinced that there is no good way to handle traffic in that sort of situation without using a ton of land.

^True. Honestly with the way retail is going anymore, it might not be that long until a sizable chunk of it (or all of it) becomes a prime redevelopment opportunity.

Its terrible design for being within sight of Cincinnati's downtown.  Travel outside of the Cincinnati region a bit and you'll see why...

 

Do you mean that it is just a suburban style shopping center too close to downtown in general, or that it is specifically bad even for suburban shopping centers?

^True. Honestly with the way retail is going anymore, it might not be that long until a sizable chunk of it (or all of it) becomes a prime redevelopment opportunity.

 

Tenants at this particular one are mostly mouth-oriented, services and medical so it is fairly well-insulated from those changes.

The traffic could be improved greatly with one easy change. Connect Park Ave to the dead parking lot behind Buffalo Wild Wings and Target. Three right of ways are within about 50' but don't connect at all. This forces anyone at chipotle/chic-fil-a etc to turn on a very dangerous left to get back to the rest of the pavilion instead of allowing people to just connect directly to Targets parking lot.

On 12/31/2012 at 7:04 PM, RestorationConsultant said:

A lot of people moved into OTR with the expectation that things would "magically happen". I would imagine that if you looked at the OTR Kroger's bottom line right now, most of their sales are on EBT/Assistance cards. That has ben their main demographic for years. From a business standpoint two things have to happen. A more upscale clientel and two, those low income people moving out . Both those things are happening but the reality is you need 25-30 thousand people downtown for a grocery to majorly change its inventory. The money is not there for them to carry gourmet cheeze and wine when the majority of their clientel isn't interested. In the real world I'd predict Kroger would be 5 years out on major changes. I have seen this play out in a couple of cities undergoing urban growth.  It takes time, be patient.

 

Sorry to revive such an ancient thread, but it's crazy how precise this prediction was. 5 years exactly and now have a Kroger that sells gourmet cheese and wine downtown.

Edit: Sorry 7 years if we count when it opened, but 5 yrs from when it was first announced. 

 

Edited September 29, 20195 yr by troeros

I made the mistake of hitting the Corryville Kroger on Christmas Eve at approx 5:15.  It was absolute bedlam.  Everyone was on edge. 

 

And that was after the credit card machines came back online:

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2019/12/24/kroger-credit-card-machines/2743140001/

One Christmas my mother was in rehab (not the Alice In Chains kind) with a broken hip. She wanted some food from Kroger since the rehab food was lacking. I had to work until 5 so that meant getting to the Kroger at 5:30. They were corralling us like it was The Club in order to make sure we were out by 6. Tons of people. This was Circleville.

Clifton Market is hiding all of the toilet paper:

UDF advertising beef from "Lindner Ranches" on Instagram.

The Ravine St. Market has two tires for sale.  The lady working there explained that the owner bought the wrong size.