St. Louis CofCC Blog

St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Dierbergs’ Clocktower Place store, which the company said has never showed a profit in its 20-year history, will close Nov. 30 when the lease on the north St. County grocery expires.

The store, at the intersection of Interstate 270 and West Florissant Avenue, employs more than 150 workers. Chesterfield-based Dierbergs Markets Inc. said there would be no layoffs, and all employees will be offered positions at other stores.

“We’re going to take care of them,” said Greg Dierberg, president and chief executive said about employees. “We want everyone who works for us now to stay with us.”

The closure marks the first time that supermarket chain has shuttered a store due to lack of business. Other closures were the result of new stores being built nearby, Dierberg said.

This particular store, at 11298 West Florissant Avenue, had been hurt by the departure of other businesses, including Best Buy, from Clocktower Place, according to Dierberg. The vacancies reduced customer visits to the entire shopping center.

But competition was also part of the problem, he said.

“Wal-Mart has to play some aspect in our minds,” said Dierberg. “Wal-Mart is right down the street.”

There is a Wal-Mart at 10741 West Florissant. In addition, there are six Schnucks and four Shop ‘n Save groceries within five miles of the Clocktower place location.

Before you believe the bromide about “competition” causing that store never to be profitable in its twenty years of business, here’s an e-mail from a member who is a north county resident, who alerted this blogmeister to this story:

This is in my area. In reality it fell victim to the creeping ghetto. The Ferguson WalMart they mention is probably one of the worst in the STL area. A wretched Shop ‘N Save location is a mile away but I wouldn’t go there at night. There was a BestBuy at Clocktower when it opened but it suddenly closed without warning at least 10 years ago. Office Depot moved across W. Florissant from next to a K-Mart to take over its store space. A mile east of Clocktower there is a dead Target, Wehrenberg 14 theatre, Casa Gallardo, Olive Garden and other places that WERE open 30+ years ago.

Why didn’t they mention shoplifting, purse-snatching, personal robberies and pan-handlers on the parking lot as reasons for being unprofitable?

What’s more of a mystery to me is that, Dierberg’s, which won’t touch St. Louis City with a ten-foot pole, for obvious reasons, somehow thought in 1987 that 270 at West Florissant would be dandy place to open a store — even in 1987, the ghetto was creeping toward that area, and now, the area is just plain creepy, and for those of you non-St. Louisans, Dierberg’s is the local premium-priced relatively upscale big-box supermarket chain.