Grocery chaos

>> Store owners object to plans for a mega-store on Mont-Royal

by CRAIG SEGAL

"Chaos." That's the word Plateau grocery store owners are using to describe the effect of a new Loblaws-backed supermarket planned for the corner of St-Urbain and Mont-Royal.

Loblaws is planning to build a store on the 4,000 square metre plot it owns where the Mont-Royal Arena burned down a year ago. It will either be a Loblaws, Provigo, Maxi, or L'Inter Marché, since the Toronto chain owns all four names. If the project goes ahead as planned, it will be the third Loblaws-affiliated store in an area packed with grocery stores, a lack of parking, and traffic that already moves slower than your grandmother in the fruit section. Needless to say, the project has put one whopper of a knot in local grocery store owners' aprons.

"Traffic is going to be a bitch," says Bobby Kottis, great-grandson of John Tsakon, the founder of Samos Bakery on St-Laurent near Marie-Anne. "Loblaws is from Toronto," adds his mother Baggy. "I think the city should do more to protect local businesses."

"The clientele of a Loblaws means more traffic in the area and even more on Parc, which is already bad enough," says Benoit Bélanger of Action du Parc, an organization that works with business owners to develop Parc Avenue. "There's a lack of logic about development in this city and a lack of democracy. We don't say it often enough. Other countries say no to this kind of development. We shouldn't be the frog that wants to be as big as a cow."

"The neighbourhood won't be the same," says Taso Erimos, owner of Supermarché P.A. on Parc. "A chain doesn't belong here. It's sad. And it's going to be chaos."

The name of the game

But no one's apron is in a bigger knot than Ramiro Correia, owner of Universal Meat Market, a grocery store established by his father 30 years ago. Like other grocery stores in the densely packed Plateau, most of Correia's clients walk to his store rather than drive since it's so hard to find a parking spot. When Correia became affiliated with Loblaws in 1999 as L'Inter Marché, nobody told him the company was planning to build another store two blocks away catering to Plateau clients.

"I called up Loblaws and asked them 'What's the joke?'" says Correia. "Loblaws told me it would be catering to another clientele, which I think is bullshit."

Loblaws confirmed that competition will be inevitable. "That's the name of the game," says Laurent Pépin, head communications guy for Loblaws and Provigo in Quebec. Although Pépin doesn't foresee having to close down either of the other Mont-Royal stores, he says it sometimes happens. "That's what happened in Kirkland where we built a new Loblaws. We knew from the beginning we would have to shut the old Provigo down." Pépin says he does not think there will be a traffic problem on the congestion-plagued corner "since the store will get a lot of walk-in traffic, like other stores in the area."

The owner of the third Loblaws-affiliated store, a Provigo further east, refused to comment.