Manchester's grocery store strikeout
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Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
Manchester's runaway growth apparently still isn't enough to land the neighborhood a grocery store.
What's happening: A local developer who was pitching major grocery chains on a mixed-used development tells Richmond BizSense's Mike Platania he's abandoned the project after finding no takers.
Why it matters: Neighborhood residents have been pining for a closer place to buy groceries for more than a decade.
- The building boom that has transformed Hull Street made it look like one might finally be in the cards.
What they're saying: “Basically the feedback I’ve gotten is Manchester needs to hit a critical mass of population. Until that happens, grocers are a little gun-shy,” developer Brent Graves told BizSense.
- He says he's putting the Commerce Road property up for sale instead.
Flashback: Graves first proposed the project at the tail end of 2020 as part of a 12-to-16-story development that would include 250 apartments.
- At the time, he said he believed the neighborhood was approaching the population density necessary to support a grocer.
By the numbers: Manchester has grown, but has still not reached the population density of the city's most built-up neighborhoods — the Fan, Museum District and Church Hill, per 2020 U.S. Census Bureau data.
Of note: For reasons that remain totally unclear, Richmond is one of the most competitive markets in the country for grocery stores.
- Industry watchers have called the region one of the primary battlegrounds of the so-called "grocery wars."
Yes, but: The plethora of stores has not yielded much in the way of geographic diversity, with major chains crowding into a single block in Carytown.
What's next: Graves told BizSense he still believes Manchester will land a grocer.
- "Maybe I’m too optimistic, but I think it’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when," he said.