Yesterday’s news that Giant Eagle will be opening a Downtown location was a much needed puzzle piece for Columbus’ urban dwellers — both current residents and future residents — who desire walkable access to groceries as a part of their neighborhood amenity package.
If you’re an urban planning enthusiast, you’ve probably heard the term “15 Minute City” tossed around. The phrase was popularized several years ago, and simply means that in a healthy urban setting, every resident can have their most common needs met within a 15 minute walk from home. That might include a walk to work, school, a doctor’s office, a shopping district, dining options, a pharmacy, and a park or two — but perhaps most importantly, groceries is often at the very top of that checklist for many people.
While Downtown has been home to a full service grocery store since the opening of The Hills Market (recently rebranded to Charmy’s Market under new ownership) twelve years ago, the Discovery District location only services a slice of Downtown within close walking distance.
For better or worse, Downtown Columbus is a gigantic neighborhood, containing several sub-neighborhoods like The Arena District and Discovery District. Combined with large and vibrant urban neighborhoods in all cardinal directions adjacent, no singular grocery store is going to fulfill the needs for those who expect a 10 to 15 minute walk (approximately 0.5 to 0.75 miles) from home.
Clearly, the solution to this problem is to have multiple smaller grocery stores, spread out across the urban landscape.
Unfortunately, for the better part of the last half-century, the model for major grocery chains like Kroger, Giant Eagle, WalMart and Whole Foods is to consolidate operations into larger and larger stores, expecting a larger radius of customers to drive for their grocery trips. The norm, especially driven by membership-based warehouses like Costco and Sam’s Club, is to make extra large grocery trips on a less frequent basis, making a car or SUV a mandatory part of the process.
The days of walking trips to the grocery store multiple times per week to pick up a handful of items that can be carried in a bag or two feel likes an antiquated idea from a century ago. And even if it’s romanticized by urban dwellers, it certainly doesn’t fit the business model for most major grocery corporations.
It’s hard to not to be jealous of much larger cities like New York or San Francisco or Chicago and see multiple urban-style stores in their Downtowns. If Whole Foods can go into the base of a tower in Manhattan, why not Columbus? The answer, to no one’s surprise, is capitalism. There’s more money to be made with a large suburban style store measuring nearly 100,000 square feet on the outskirts of the urban core rather than a small Downtown store, especially if the residential base there is still small, yet growing. Corporations are not urban trendsetters… they follow the market and make safe longterm investments with each new buildout.
I’d be willing to make a bet that Giant Eagle was offered a compelling incentive package to open this new urban store at The Peninsula. Perhaps that included a good deal on rent. Perhaps that included tax incentives related to job creation. Perhaps that included dedicated parking for customers within the building. It’s not often that a press release announcing a new grocery store in a city the size of Columbus includes quotes from the Mayor, City Council President, the County Commission President and the chairman of the master planner of the site — so it sounds to me like everyone played a role in making this happen.
Which in my opinion, is a good thing. This type of brand-name store is an important feather in the cap for Downtown Columbus and will certainly play an economic development role when it comes to attracting more residents, businesses and development in the area for years to come.
That being said, it’s not the only feather.
In addition to the aforementioned Charmy’s Market, the southern end of Downtown Columbus has been served by the Brewer’s Yard Kroger since 2006. While it’s technically located just outside of Downtown proper, it’s a very short walk for residents who live in apartments and condos in the RiverSouth area, especially once the Front Street bridge reopens.
Similarly, Lucky’s Market opened on Neil Avenue in Victorian Village in 2024, a very short walk for people who live in The Arena District.
Additionally, Toro Meat Market, a locally-based Mexican grocery store, is slated to open in the ground floor of The Continental Building before the end of the year, bringing another centrally located grocer to Downtown residents, workers and visitors.
Of course, I’d be remiss to not mention the variety of convenience stores located throughout the area. While they don’t provide a full selection of groceries, they’re great for quick items, snacks, drinks and party supplies. Noteworthy spots include DGX, Franklinton Market, and my personal favorite: the NYC-esque bodega near Broad & High known as “Downtown Convenience”.
And last but not least, let’s not forget the grandaddy of them all: The North Market. It’s a common refrain on social media to dismiss the North Market as nothing more than a food court, but I think that’s a big mistake to make. Not only does the North Market currently include a wide variety of grocery items at vendors including Mini-Super, Littleton’s Bakery, North Market Spices, Pastaria, Green Olive, Black Radish, Market Blooms and more — the facility will be expanded with additional yet-to-be-announced market vendors upon completion of the Merchant Building addition.
For fun (yes, this is what I consider fun), I put together a quick radial map of five Downtown-area grocery store locations: Charmy’s, Kroger, Lucky’s, Toro (coming soon) and Giant Eagle (coming later). The radius drawn around each is a 0.75 mile circle, approximately a 15-minute walk for the average person.
Downtown grocery stores and their 15 minute walk radii.
The math isn’t perfect, as people generally are walking only on sidewalks and not in straight lines, and there are a few barriers (highways, rivers and train tracks) in a few locations, but I think it serves a purpose to illustrate that the entirety of Downtown Columbus will soon be walkable to at least one grocery store, if not multiple stores. And if you choose a place to live wisely, you may even be within a quick walk of four different grocery stores.
We may not be the most walkable city in the country, but things are headed in the right direction.
Dining and Cooking