This picture hangs on the Price Hill Wall in our house. The mosaic was on the vacant older Kroger building on the site of the vacant newer Kroger building. (Yes, there were 2 vacant Kroger buildings on the same lot until they were razed a couple months ago.)We thought Kroger would surely just knock the building over when building the new megastore. Big institutions don't seem to pay much attention to little details... they just knock stuff down and build new stuff, history be damned. And they surely don't care about mosaics, no matter how fun I think they are.
I try to talk myself into thinking the new buildings are better because they are more comfortable, and more energy efficient, and the construction industry is vital to our economy, and et cetera... all of which are true... but then after a couple years, the new buildings just look and feel... well, "blah".
There's a reason I like my 1890-built house so much. It's the same reason I don't like cheap subdivisions. I like good-looking buildings, and big boxes aren't designed to win architectural awards.
I honestly wonder if it's even in Kroger's best interest (and I mean the bottom line, the almighty dollar) to invest in the neighborhood. My college professors drilled it into my head that a corporation's main goal is to make as much money as they can. Sure, they should be good to the community and the environment and all that, but that isn't the main thing.No offense to MY neighborhood, but it certainly has its fair share of boarded up buildings (both residential and commercial) that need to be knocked over in the blocks surrounding this new facility. Was a new store even necessary? Gotta sell an awful lot of green beans to cover the bill for this new place.
I honestly wonder if it's even good for the neighborhood at all. Will the jobs created and money spent at this new megastore kill off even more of the few locally-owned shops that remain? Is the new place just going to take more precious dollars away from mom & pop in this poor community?
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Then, a couple weeks ago, I saw it. I was downright shocked that they even thought to consider it, let alone actually do it. Surely, transporting an old mosaic from a vacant/doomed building to the new brick facade wasn't the cheap way to go. Kroger gets bonus points with me. Big time.
I suddenly have a better feeling about the new store. My aforementioned questions are still unanswered, and they still concern me, but I'm happier because of the little piece of nostalgia that we will walk past every time we shop.If that makes me naive and susceptible, so be it. Little things matter to me. Like old mosaics on grocery store facades. This makes me happy.
2 comments:
believe me when i say that kroger is getting incentives from the city to keep your store open. same thing has happened to other tiny kroger stores in high-risk areas that don't pull in big bucks for the corporate office. 15-20 years ago when we were living in a scary part of corryville / clifton, kroger was trying to back out of a small store (not the clifton store, but one down near the WH viaduct). community meetings, city pleading, incentives offered, and kroger agreed to stick it out.
it's not fair to say that kroger can't have a philanthropic purpose, too, or that they won't use these tiny stores to crow about their community involvement - they are a good company, and a local one to boot.
we always liked the price hill kroger and shopped there frequently when we lived on grand ave a couple years. only complaint was the salad bar was too small. :-)
krogers, is a solid blue chip cincinnati company. unfortunately, they sometimes need encouragement to think beyond their mathmatical formulas, especially when they threaten to obstruct progress in our city...
http://www.building-cincinnati.com/2008/08/corryville-homeowner-says-kroger.html
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