While the recent closings of several Madison grocery stores caused concern among city officials, representatives of two downtown markets said the center area of Madison is already well-served.
After a Copps store and two Kohl's stores closed in recent months, Mayor Dave Cieslewicz held a meeting Aug. 27 to discuss how Madison could support local grocery stores. But spokespeople from Capitol Centre Foods, 111 N. Broom St., and Mifflin Street Community Co-Op, 32 N. Bassett, said Madison needs to work on supporting the groceries it has, particularly downtown, rather than building new ones.
John Leemkuil, owner of Cap Foods, said he believes central Madison does not need more stores and could not maintain more than one large grocery store.
\I feel that we offer everything that downtown Madison needs right now,"" he said. ""Downtown cannot support two of us.""
Leemkuil added that his store is considering expanding and moving across the street, but any move would be a long way away.
Valerie Benner, an outreach manager at Mifflin Street Co-Op, said she agreed with Leemkuil that the solution was not more stores, but more support for existing community grocery stores.
""People aren't supporting the co-ops that they have here in Madison as much as they could. It's the same with Capitol Centre. A lot of people would rather spend the gas and the time to go out to bigger grocery stores that may have a bigger selection.""
According to Benner, the city government could show its support by increasing downtown parking, dealing better with construction detours and helping with advertising.
She added that while the co-op would always try to support local farmers and organic foods, the competition from larger natural foods stores such as Whole Foods has her worried.
""With natural foods becoming mainwave, just about every major corporate grocery store is going to be a competitor for us,"" she said.
However, some Madison shoppers believe more stores are needed. Dave Kanera, who shops at Capitol Centre Foods, said he purchases groceries there because it is close to where he lives, but wishes he had more options available.
""More variety would be a big improvement,"" he said. ""We lost the Kohl's over on the East side and Sentry on East Washington, so there really isn't anything in the central area closer than this to shop at.\
