Maybe it doesn’t seem like news of statewide significance, but it’s big, not just for Rochester, but for an upstate region whose center cities are turning the corner?
Hart’s Local Grocer, named in honor of a series of over 100 neighborhood stores that prospered all over the City of Rochester 85 years ago, will open in May in Rochester’s “East End” downtown neighborhood. Over the last decade, Rochester has seen an auspicious uptick in residential development and residential population growth in its downtown, but the retail really hasn’t followed. In particular, downtown residents, urban planning experts, city officials, and just about everyone else have lamented the lack of a center-city grocery store for the growing downtown residential population. Hart’s, a 21,000 square-foot store, aims to be a big part of downtown’s transformation into a vibrant, walkable, urban neighborhood.
The interest and confidence of the store’s developer is promising evidence that downtown Rochester–and other upstate cities that are seeing population increases downtown?–are on their way.
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