Page 17 - BusinessWest August 22, 2022

Colin D’Amour says the planned downtown store is unlike anything Big Y has created before and is, in many respects, a pioneering endeavor.
BusinessWest
COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE AUGUST 22, 2022 17
Commercial Real Estate
Urban Pioneers
Big Y’s Downtown Springfield Project Is a Different Kind of Venture
Big Y Foods will soon begin the process of transforming the former CVS location in Tower Square into its latest market. The chain has been operating for nearly 80 years now and has expanded its footprint well beyond its roots at that now-famous intersection in Chicopee where the converging roads formed a ‘Y.’ But this venture is something completely different in terms of scale — and just about everything else.
By George O’Brien
I
n many respects, the new store that Big Y is plan- ning for the space in Tower Square formerly occupied by CVS constitutes pioneering — for the company and the city.
Indeed, what is proposed, a scaled-down version of a Big Y supermarket in an urban setting — the heart of downtown Springfield — hasn’t been tried before, as far as anyone knows. And it certainly hasn’t been tried by Big Y, the chain of supermarkets started by brothers Paul and Gerry D’Amour in 1936.
“To the outside observer, they see us operating super- markets and say, ‘this is just a smaller format,’” said Colin D’Amour, senior director of Big Y Express and point per- son on this project. “But it’s really a completely new ven- ture for us, everything from distribution to operations to trucking ... we’ve never operated a downtown, urban-for- mat market before, so there are a whole lot of unknowns for us.”
So while there is a great deal of anticipation and excite- ment about the company’s plans — downtown Springfield has been a food desert for decades now, and the need for a supermarket in that area has long been a recognized need — there is also a great deal of uncertainty about just how this will all play out.