If you are not local, you may not care or even notice, but there has been quite a shuffle going on in the downtown food scene recently. For starters, four different micro-grocery related businesses have announced plans to open or relocate within downtown. This must be partly due to the many new housing units coming online in the next 2 years. But is it overkill?
1. Irving's, a market / deli with great food that opened in 2005, closed on December 31, 2018, and
will be reopening at an undisclosed location downtown (undisclosed, but I'm pretty sure it is going to be within the former PNC Bank branch).
2. A new market and deli is
going to take Irving's place, within the Kalamazoo City Centre complex (125 S Kalamazoo Mall).
3. Just a few days ago, a mini-grocery (MoMA) was
announced, to go into the former downtown Biggby location.
4. Bronson Methodist Hospital
just opened its own micro-grocery within its main campus on January 7. It is targeted towards hospital staff, but open to the public.
Downtown Kalamazoo and its surrounding neighborhoods have sometimes been described as a food desert, but with the addition of these four markets, not to mention the recently opened Midtown Fresh (a full-service grocery located in the former Hardings, in the Westnedge Hill neighborhood) I wonder if it is too much, too fast.