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Some Carbondale residents cautiously optimistic about new City Market

City Market is looking at building a new store in Carbondale. It would replace an existing aging facility at Highway 133 and Main Street. Aspen Public Radio’s Elise Thatcher has this report from a town hall meeting last night about the proposal.

  A community room at the Third Street Center is filled with residents examining drawings. They’re asking questions about what a new City Market could look like at a different location, closer to Highway 82.  “Just two bike rack areas right now? And the bike locker?” asks one woman. “We do have three right now, there’s some out in front of the retail,” points Joe Schiel. “And then we do have these lockers up here.” He’s one of many representatives explaining what would be included.

The list includes charging stations for electric vehicles, public art, and solar panels and other measures to meet the town’s new green building code. The store itself would be 58,000 square feet, with nearly ten thousand of it retail. That’s described as room for four to five smaller businesses, like liquor stores or a dry cleaner. There would be a City Market gas station, too.

“For me personally I think it’s probably a positive development for the town.” Resident Marty Treadway likes the sustainability and renewable energy focus. However, he thinks it will be an uphill battle for the developer. “I think it’s going to be a challenge, given our local community and our disdain for large projects,” he laughs.

Treadway is referring to a much larger proposal on the property in question that Carbondale voters turned down in 2012. He helped defeat that project. Now he’d like to see a walkable, better grocery store in town town limits. The current proposal is in the middle of an undeveloped field, across from Family Dollar. City Market has checked out locations just outside Carbondale.

“We’re not able to provide this community the products that it desires given the facility we have now,” says Joel Starbuck. He’s retail chain’s Assistant Director of Real Estate. “And this new facility is going to allow us to serve the community much better. I know, because I have stores up and down the valley, that a lot of people who live in this town, do not shop in this town.”

Most attendees at Wednesday night’s gathering said they wanted a new location, though some raised questions about a proposed drive-through pharmacy. The proposal has lots of steps before it could be built, like approval from town officials and parent company Kroger buying the land. If completed, it would open in 2017.

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