I watch with interest the news involving Syracuse-based P&C grocery stores and the efforts by the parent company to find a new buyer. It’s another step toward the march of consolidation across America, and in the grocery business, Syracuse falls first.
The Upstate New York corridor once thrived with home-grown businesses; department stores, jewelers, hat makers, grocers; even automobile manufacturers. We couldn’t imagine today that Syracuse would create a brand of car that would be built right here and sold across the country. The Franklin automobile didn’t last long, but other industrial giants carried on well into the 20th century; Carrier, Crouse-Hinds, Solvay Process.
Penn Traffic hobbled into the 21st century but it was broken, with too many problems to fix the third time around even for skilled bankruptcy professionals. Now the company will be sold and some of the stores essential to our neighborhoods will close. We’ll be forced away from the environmentally-friendly practice of walking or driving a short distance for our food and toward congested super centers many miles away. A couple of quick hops to the grocery store will be replaced with one gigantic stressful weekly haul on a Saturday. We forgot a recipe ingredient for Wednesday’s dinner? Back in the car we go.
Remember The Addis Company? It was the pride of Syracuse shopping. The most exclusive and lovely items enticed you to take a bus and come downtown for the day. Once you arrived on Salina Street you could stroll the sidewalks, have a light lunch and go home again, made better by fresh air, some exercise, new merchandise and your contribution to the business people who were raising their families next to yours.
Is it my imagination or do the Syracuse businesses fall first? We lost Carrier Corporation but Rochester kept Kodak. We lost Addis and Rochester kept Sibleys, at least for while. Now we prepare for the end of P&C while Buffalo keeps Tops, Rochester keeps Wegmans and Albany keeps Price Chopper. Tops and Price Chopper are in a bidding war for what remains of Penn Traffic.
I don’t want to end this article on a pitiful note. Rather, I’ll relay a story I used to tell my little children when we vacationed on Cape Cod. Back then we shopped for groceries at the A&P or the Stop and Shop. Every year, when we drove past one of the stores I told my children the stores were merging. The new name? Stop & P. Cracked them up every time.
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Hi Maureen,You and I being from New England at different times,saw big industry move to different areas. The textile mills that I worked at as a teenager, moved south to cheaper labor. That for me was 1954 and I thought at the time, I would work there for life. The town of Housatonic Ma. had about 5000 folks. They had one large mill that made bedspreads. My father worked there and I worked there two summers. The town had 4 private grocery stores,with meat department with each one, 1 private drugstore, and a 5@10 cent store. Just imagine you could call the grocery store and give your order and have them deliver it and put it on a tab! The bus came from Pittsfield and stopped at 2 places in Housatonic and travel to Great Barrington Ma. for 5 cents. That was 1 cent a mile. There was a movie theater in Great Barrington and it was 10 cents for the show. That means for 25 cents your Mom could send you to the show,buy you a candy bar and ride the bus round trip. Wow! She did not have to worry about you either. That just goes to show you big business has been moving from the north east for years and effects people the same way for lots of years.. Housatonic has about 1500 people now ,still has a private drug store, and one small grocery store (no home delivery or tab anymore thou). Bar rooms seem to be the strong business in Housatonic now. Syracuse is a large city,but,is changing and 50 years from now it will only be a great memory to the teenagers of Syracuse, as Housatonic Mass. today is to me.