Effort to Save Midtown Sweetbay Fails
The Midtown Sweetbay is scheduled to close by mid-February, but much of the store is empty since no re-stocking has occurred since the closing announcement.
A last-ditch effort by the City of St. Petersburg to stop or delay the closing of the Midtown Sweetbay has failed.
According to the Tampa Bay Times, Mayor Bill Foster and Sweetbay landlord Larry Newsome were told the planned mid-February closure would happen as scheduled. The company said it would help find a new grocer in the Tangerine Plaza in Midtown.
"We look forward to working together with Mayor Foster to quickly find a grocer that can help meet the needs of this community," Sweetbay spokeswoman Nicole LeBeau said Wednesday morning."
In previous public meetings Foster said he expected Sweetbay to close, and in the event it did, the city is in conversations with other grocery vendors to quickly fill the space.
Foster and city officials said they were blindsided by the news two weeks ago that Sweetbay would be closing three St. Pete stores. The St. Pete store closings are a part of 33 "underperforming" stores that Sweetbay announced it would close.
St. Pete Stores to Close:
- 6095 9th Ave. N
- 955 62nd Ave. S
- 1794 22nd St. S
On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Foster, along with city and state officials and community activists, held a press conference in the parking lot of the Midtown Sweetbay to ratchet up public pressure to open a dialogue with Sweetbay.
Some, including state Rep. Darryl Rouson, argued passionately for Sweetbay to stay.
"This is more than just four walls and a roof. It’s about the catalyst of economic development," Rouson said at the press conference. " ... This building, this is more than just a building. It’s a story of the beginning of growth in a community. We cannot let this building go dark and we will not. And we want to keep (Sweetbay) but they have got to understand our feelings. But come talk to us. Don’t treat us like somebody that has not been a partner in wanting your success."
Foster and Newsome at the time of the press conference claimed silence from Sweetbay, but according to Sweetbay officials Foster was told of the struggling store in April 2011.
That issue came to a head at the Jan. 24 city council meeting among council members Wengay Newton, Leslie Curran and Mayor Foster.
Curran and Newton were skeptical of Foster's recollection of the meeting that took place with St. Pete officials nearly two years ago.
They said it was a pattern of stories changing by the Foster administration.
"... Because of the pattern that was presented, when you talked about the Rays, a secret plan, then there was the RNC, then the cameras, then the house was torn down, that story’s changed four or five times," Curran said at the Jan. 24 council meeting.
Foster said that he met with Sweetbay officials then, but that they expressed no dire financial situations of the Midtown Sweetbay.
"Nothing was expressed to me that there were financial issues with this store," Foster said at the meeting.
Starting Jan. 30, Sweetbay was taking 50 percent off everything left in the Sweetbay stores that are closing.
Rider
10:14 am on Thursday, January 31, 2013
Did the mayor really use taxpayer money to travel and meet with Sweetbay reps? Really? Is he campaigning already? I mean, what part of "our company is hurting" does he not understand? My gosh, let the owners of the strip mall get to work, there are plenty of incentives for them to work hard to get another grocer there....it's called....paying bills........this is unbelievable.....
ava
10:24 am on Thursday, January 31, 2013
Some 7-11's have an office for police presence. Why was the same not done for the "underperforming" stores before they had no choice but to close? Instead of fixing the problem in these areas, it will now spread to the other stores and neighborhoods.
Steve
10:34 am on Thursday, January 31, 2013
I frankly don't think that somebody is going to rush in to take up a failed store--certainly not anybody interested in replicating a market with the scale and scope of the current Sweetbay. In some ways, one of the failures in the store may have been in its being "overambitious." My observation is that Sweetbay is incredibly inept at marketing for various areas: one Sweeetbay anywhere looks the same as any other, anywhere else. Surprisingly, other stores also related to Hannaford are very skillful: a store in a Latino area has lots of products tailor-made for that area. The Goya section, for example, is huge, carrying everything that Goya makes or packages. Some of the fancier trappings--on-site baking, for example, or a pharmacy--not included. Somewhere between mom-and-pop markets and the closing Sweetbay SHOULD be a model which has lower overhead, but can continue to serve the neighborhood. Even Publix, I think, is clever enough to figure out how to do that.