Page 19 - BusinessWest August 22, 2022

tunity, it was prepared to take full advantage of it. “We were able to pull it together and make it work.”
Prepared, yes, but still moving into what would be uncharted territory for this compa- ny — and many supermarket chains, for that matter. Indeed, the location would be in the middle of the city’s downtown, with no on-
location. I don’t think we would have been able to get there — what with rising construc- tion costs and trying to figure out an entirely new model — without that federal money.”
Elaborating, he said the traditional Big Y model, one seen across this region and now far beyond, into Connecticut, Central Mass., and now Eastern Mass., is the suburban World
“We’ve tried to take little bits of what we like from some different markets out there. But we think downtown Springfield is a bit unique, and we think that we understand the Western Mass. customer and the Springfield customer, and we’re trying to
blend our brand with what we’ve seen other folks do in other environments and come up with something we think will work in this setting.”
The new market will serve people who work in the office towers, as well as residents who live downtown.
site parking and certainly no loading dock. These unknowns, along with uncertainty
about just how much traffic this site will generate, made it enough of a risk that the project required an investment from the city, said D’Amour, adding that this investment has come in the form of $1 million in federal COVID CARES Act funding.
“That funding allowed us to answer some of those unknowns,” he said. “It solved some unsolvable challenges around distribution and issues like that, and it allowed us to see a pathway to a financially viable market in this
Class Market, usually in a larger shopping center, with acres of parking; the company just unveiled its latest plans to build a store in Middletown, Conn. The Tower Square store is a much different model, one that, as noted, comes with a large supply of unknowns.
“There’s nothing close to this in terms of the urban setting, and there’s nothing close to this in terms of size,” he said. “This is maybe one-fifth the size of one of our traditional supermarkets. Obviously, all of our stores are unique in size and layout, but this is certainly an outlier.”
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