I f Pine Bluff needed an additional reason to wring its collective hands, the closing of another grocery store provided the opportunity.
Last week, news came out that the Cash Saver store on Sixth Avenue was closing. The revelation came out a little sideways, considering that there was apparently no “Dear Pine Bluff” letter from the company that runs the store. As the store manager said: “We found out Monday at 9 o’clock through a meeting.”
The rest of the story was that Brookshire Grocery Co., the entity that owns most of the grocery outlets in the area, will buy the equipment left behind by Cash Saver. There was no indication that Brookshire would continue to operate a grocery store from that location.
In short, this leaves another area of the city in a bit of a food desert, with the consequences of that new desert limited to or exacerbated by customers’ ability or inability to get from one place to another in town.
It’s hard to forget that Brookshire itself closed a store in the Broadmoor area in late 2022. The explanation for that closing tugged at logical extremes, at once claiming that it was hard to find employees and also saying it would be best for the Brookshire “team” to focus on more profitable areas.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
In the end, for pretty much any business, if it’s making good or good enough money, it sticks around, and if it’s not, eventually the decision is made to hang “Closed” signs on the doors.
One council member has tried and tried, to no avail, to attract the attention of other grocery store operators to fill that Broadmoor location. And there has been some effort to get a “grocery store” in that tiny little space at the plaza thing at Sixth Avenue. We put that term in quotes because the space is more like that of a convenience store, which is decidedly not a replacement for the full-service store that closed.
On the one hand, grocery stores or supermarkets, if you will, come and go. There was the one around 13th and Main many years ago and also the one at 16th and Cherry. They were humming along, we imagine, when Pine Bluff’s fortunes were more aglow.
But for many years now, the population of Pine Bluff has dropped. Who can forget that the city was deemed the fastest-shrinking city in America? Businesses in a community are inextricably tied to the size and riches of the community. If Cash Saver’s bottom line has been dropping each year, and the owners see no turnaround in the crystal ball, who can blame them for calling it quits? Recall that Havertys furniture store did the same thing last year.
In short, the problem is Pine Bluff’s alone. Create a community where the schools are sound, where crime is manageable, where the quality of life is something to be savored — where people, writ large, want to live and visit — and one will behold a Pine Bluff that has found its footing. The closing of one store does not in and of itself define a community, but taken as a whole, Pine Bluff’s arrow is still pointing down.