Hy-Vee is a symptom of a deeper problem

 

1556 1st Avenue NE in 2014. It will close June 23.
(Taxable value per acre $1,204,012 on 1.89 acres)

I come not to bury Hy-Vee, but to praise it. It will be faint praise, but nonetheless, I think the impending the store closure highlights a broader problem with which we should be dealing.

Hy-Vee's announcement earlier this month surprised and outraged a lot of people, which is understandable. This is the only full-service grocery store in the core area of Cedar Rapids, located as it is at a major intersection in the Mound View neighborhood, just across 1st Avenue from Wellington Heights. It draws a lot of customers from both neighborhoods, including considerable foot traffic. I was impressed, while doing some observations at Redmond Park ten years ago, how many people were walking through the park on their way to Hy-Vee. Mayor Tiffany O'Donnell stated:

Generations of customers have relied on this store for their basic needs. It is unfortunate the company is leaving at a time when the nearby neighborhoods are seeing significant improvements and public investment.... We know that access to fresh, affordable food is crucial for our community's well-being, and we will work with local agencies to meet the needs of those impacted most by this closure. (Quoted at Murphy 2024)

City Council member Dale Todd called it "an abandonment of some of our community's most vulnerable," while State Representative Sami Scheetz said "its closure betrays the community's trust and investment." The local activist group Advocates for Social Justice organized a protest at the store's Oakland Road location for this Sunday. A few of my friends have posted their intention to move their grocery lives elsewhere--though of course Aldi, Fareway, and New Pioneer Co-op don't have presences in the core either.

This outrage is not without cause. Besides moving out of the core, many people recalled when Hy-Vee sought to close the 1st Avenue location in 2000, the City responded with subsidies and tax benefits to keep it there. This time the announcement appeared to catch city officials off guard. "[I]nstead of working with us to address the inherent challenges," said Todd, "this feels like an abandonment and a complete run for the hills" (all quotes at Murphy 2024). Those hills have increasingly been larger stores with large parking lots at the city's edge; closing 1st Avenue completes Hy-Vee's abandonment of walkable neighborhoods.

Hy-Vee, 5050 Edgewood Road NE, Black Friday 2021 (built 2005)
(Taxable value per acre $801,144 on 11.36 acres)

There is definitely something to be said for corporate social responsibility, but we're not going to say it here. There's a more important point to be made. If we are successful at rebuilding the core of the city, businesses will want to be here, because of the profits will be made. Being in such a primo location will be incentive enough. Put another way: We can't build a strong city on charity. We need to be attractive to profit-seeking businesses. Hy-Vee made a "business" decision, as frankly did the school district; how can we develop the city's core in ways that business decisions are to locate here?

Hy-Vee is only the latest institution to leave the city's core, in spite of significant residential construction and city investment in downtown, New Bohemia, Czech Village, and Kingston. The Cedar Rapids Community School District is in the process of closing most of its core schools. Even McDonald's and Subway have closed their 1st Avenue locations, and two of the four chains in the College Commons have left. The lovely new building at 1445 1st Avenue SE has never had a tenant. And that's just the first two blocks away from the Hy-Vee store. The efforts that have gone into rebuilding the city from the center out are for some reason(s) not computing for some people.

It's ok to be mad, and to vent that anger at the corporate giant that is Hy-Vee. But then we need to have some serious conversations about the core of the city. What do we, and I include the public as well as the private sectors, need to do to make this an attractive place to live and do business?

I have some thoughts on this, but at this point they're mere opinions. I think we're dealing with:

1. an unbalanced national/global economy where a relatively small number of people have an outsized share of spending money, which has distorted commerce as well as social relations; 
2. the ease of car driving in most of the metro has led people to develop "drive-to" urbanism based on boutique shopping in much of the core;
3. nothing that looks like the transect can emerge out of the city center because we've walled it off with the MedQuarter, I-380, and the proposed casino; and 
4. better development is inhibited because the property tax system incentivizes "land banking" by unscrupulous property owners.

As I say, though, these are just one observer's opinions. We need to have some serious, informed, intense conversations about the reality that Hy-Vee has helped expose.

SOURCE FOR ALL QUOTATIONS: Erin Murphy, "First Ave. Hy-Vee to Close, Leaving C.R. Grocery Gap," Cedar Rapids Gazette, 10 May 2024, 1A, 10A

SEE ALSO: "Hy-Vee Releases Statement on Closures, Offers Ways to Help People Living Nearby," kcrg.com, 22 May 2024