Grocery stores adapt to urban trends

New Urban News Article with images and sidebar, 10/1/2003

Supermarkets fit into pedestrianoriented sites with basement parking, liner stores, housing above, and other techniques.

North America’s grocers are discovering that if they build a better food store, customers will beat a path to their door — or, in some instances, to their basement parking garage. Across the US and Canada, a growing number of supermarket companies no longer automatically insist on constructing a 55,000- to 65,000-square-foot box sitting behind a big expanse of asphalt. Instead, they’ll agree to operate stores that come up to the sidewalk, that have small shops along their perimeter, or that — in dense urban settings — have parking underneath.

A new age in grocery store design appears to be dawning. “Almost all the supermarket chains are willing to be flexible,” says Robert Gibbs, a retail consultant based in Birmingham, Michigan. Here are conclusions that emerge from a New Urban News look at food store innovations: