Still In The Neighborhood

A&P Store Closing image is not the actual Greenburgh store scheduled to close.

Where will you purchase your food now that two supermarkets in Greenburgh, the A&P on Rt 119 and Pathmark on Central Avenue, are closing come April 15? Councilwoman Sonya Brown, the internal thorn in Paul Feiner's side from within his handpicked the Town Board, held a community meeting at the Union Baptist Church on Manhattan Avenue. The Paul wasn't there. ABG is sure the other handpicked Board members were instructed not to attend or face the consequences. There, the Heyman Realty company's representative answered a few questions about their A&P tenant leaving on April 16. Pathmark closes on April 15. Neither Brown nor Heyman offered any tangible information to the public. In fact, the public offered more information than the realty representative. That's the problem with politicians who have never worked in private industry. They have never had to think outside the box, only talk about it.

Last week residents received a form letter from the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A&P ), located in Montvale, NJ. It said that they are still in the neighborhood. They are. They're in the same shopping center as the Cinema 100 and Pizza & Brew between Dobbs Ferry and Hartsdale Roads. They've been there for years. ABG won't shop there because they only have a few registers, causing for longer lines and increased waiting on line. We don't feel its right to wait on line for as long as it took us to shop! They also don't have the variety of goods we prefer. Ironic that that's the A&P that should be closing, but it's not. And, it's not as large as the Rt 119 A&P. So the argument that food store companies are only looking for 60k square foot/bigger spaces as compared to the Rt 119 A&P's 40k square foot space loses some of its persuasiveness.

To entice the area residents to shop at these other locations, they're offering $5 off a $50 purchase each week for the month of August. The coupons are only good at other A&P's, not the ones that are closing. Nowadays, that's won't pay for the gas needed to get there and back. Do something worthwhile for us or not at all, just don't insult us. Stop and Shop is an equal distant away for us by car. And that's the real issue here. People without a car or access to a car are stuck. The rest of us? We go to Stop & Shop and once we're gone, you'll be hard pressed to get us back. We're the example of the shopper who doesn't complain, we just don't come back. Retail 101.

We should add that several of our staffers used to work for the famous tea company's distribution center in Elmsford during our respective college days. It's how we all know each other. Back then, to break the unions and reduce theft (it was rampant), they closed the center and moved their operation to New Jersey. It hurt them in a lot of ways, but they had a goal. They would later enter bankruptcy and emerge anew. ABG is not sure how often they can be in Chapter 11 before the you-know-what hits the fan and they submerge for good, never to resurface again.