Grocery store for MacKenzie Towne

A 37,000 square foot grocery store is expected to open its doors in McKenzie Towne in Calgary, Alberta, before the end of the year. This may be the first sizable supermarket to open in a pedestrian-oriented town center of a traditional neighborhood development. Carma, developers of this 2,400-acre project designed by Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, is rapidly building the commercial town center, called High Street, which also will include a bank, coffee shop, pub, video store, and other shops and restaurants. High Street probably will sound the death knell of the Inverness General Store, a small convenience grocery located on the town square of McKenzie Towne’s first neighborhood, called Inverness. The store is not a “destination” shop, and benefits from little drive-by traffic. Its main customers are the 500 households living in Inverness who can walk to it. The store is not doing well, even though residents pick up their mail in a lobby next to the store entrance. “You need about 1,000 households to support a convenience store,” says Robert Hunsberger of Carma. High Street is within walking distance of Inverness and probably will siphon off many of the General Store’s existing customers. A new tenant will be found for Inverness’s commercial building, Hunsberger says.