Former grocery stores having trouble rising from the ashes

Long before Batavia city officials began discussing the possibility of another grocery store setting up shop downtown, troubling fallout from that ornery recession was apparent.

Of all of the empty buildings left in the wake of the economic downturn, those that once housed large grocery stores appear to be the most difficult to reopen with new tenants.

A quick glance tells us St. Charles has an empty spot on the east side in the former Butera location, and Geneva has one on Randall Road where Dominick's served the area for years.

It's probably not fair to include it, but St. Charles never replaced its empty Aldi location in the west side Valley Shopping Center after the grocery store moved west of Randall Road. Batavia has a smaller empty location off Main and Randall that housed Aldi before it moved to a new spot on Randall near Hobby Lobby.

Someone with a lot more knowledge of the commercial business world would have to say why it is that these grocery store spots have a hard time rising from the ashes.

More likely, these empty locations will become something quite different from a grocery operation. When St. Charles lost its Dominick's on the west side, the building became a hardware store for a short period of time, and ultimately a Salvation Army drop-off location and store. And, as far back as when Geneva lost Eagle, a Best Buy took up shop in that Randall Road location.

Local officials likely agree that filling an empty grocery store is a tough task. But it's difficult to agree fully with a theory being bandied about in Batavia that today's consumers don't particularly like shopping at larger grocery stores, thus the large empty sites may stay that way and a smaller "destination" type offering in a downtown area should fly.

Someone please tell that to the hordes piling into Meijer in St. Charles just about any time I go there.

The curtain falls

For years, it has been hard to look at the empty Foxfield Theater on the east side of St. Charles and wonder what possible use it could have in the future.

It doesn't quite carry the nostalgic power of the Arcada Theatre in downtown St. Charles, but Foxfield was the first place we took our son to see a movie some 25 years ago. The movie? We remember that, too: "The Land Before Time."

In other words, no one was likely shedding many tears over the fact the Foxfield Theater, which opened in 1984, was being smashed to pieces last week by a wrecking ball.

It's being leveled to make way for more cars from the McGrath Honda dealership, which has been using the theater's parking area for years now and bought the theater building to clear it out.

Not much else was logically going to try to start a retail business in this area, somewhat hidden off Main Street, so an overflow lot for new cars at least makes use of the space.

The curtain rises

As for the Arcada Theatre, we can't let another column slip by without congratulating Ron Onesti for what has now been 10 years and counting for reviving the historic venue and thrusting it into the public eye in a way it hasn't seen since its glorious vaudeville days in the 1920s.

Before Onesti took over in 2005, the theater was pretty much aging ungracefully, though previous owners tried hard to keep it alive as a movie theater with less expensive second-run showings.

Onesti had a different vision, mainly because his past experiences in show business taught him something important: Entertainers love small, historic places with great acoustics in which connecting with the audience and leaving a lasting impression is much easier.

And that's what he has done for past decade.

Really close call

We were extremely relieved to hear that Philip, Mark and Danny Carlson, all former Geneva High School students, were not injured in a serious accident on Easter Sunday on the Eisenhower Expressway. The brothers were heading into Chicago to attend services at old St. Patrick's with their parents when a car on the expressway clipped their Subaru, flipping it over and sending it careening down the busy expressway about 500 feet. You can imagine the shock for their parents, who were following behind and came upon the smashed car moments after it happened.

It was an Easter miracle that we didn't lose these close friends we've watched grow up with our son and enjoy successful exploits in high school sports, music and academics, and then go on to college and careers.

"I know one thing," their father, Bill Carlson, said. "That Subaru is built like a tank. It is just unbelievable they crawled out of that car without serious injuries."

It will be 'wild'

They are calling it a "Wild Baby Shower," but I've never heard ladies talk about what a wild time they had at a baby shower.

Luckily, I read the news release a bit further than the headline. It's a baby shower day from noon to 4 p.m. Sunday, April 19, at the Fox Valley Wildlife Center near the entrance of the Elburn Forest Preserve.

Admission to the family event is free if attendees bring an item from the center's wish list for the animals it nurses back to health. Among the items the center needs are dry kitten and puppy food, plain paper towels, unscented Kleenex, baby blankets, wild bird seed, unflavored Pedialyte, and unscented laundry soap or bleach.

dheun@sbcglobal.net