Great Barrington — The Selectboard is scheduled to review the application for a liquor license for Price Chopper at its regular meeting on Monday, December 4. The meeting is also scheduled to include a public hearing on the application. This will be the third time that the Schenectady, N.Y.-based company has submitted the application for its grocery store located at 300 Stockbridge Road.
In an email request for comment to the company from The Berkshire Edge, company media representative Mona Golub from Northeast Shared Services wrote that the company’s application remains the same from when it first applied for its license back in May 2022. When asked, Golub would not provide a copy of the application to The Berkshire Edge “because it contains personal and sensitive information about the officers and directors of the company,” and, therefore, said they “don’t intend to distribute copies of it.”
The company presented its plans to the Selectboard back on May 11, 2022. As proposed, the store wanted to create a new aisle of 1,900 square feet for beer and wine. The proposed aisle has been part of the store’s redesign plans for over a year.
Back at the May 12, 2022 meeting, Selectboard member Eric Gabriel said, “I’m uncomfortable with every grocery store in Great Barrington having a package store or beer and wine in it. We have many residents [for whom] the temptations are too great … and this would give them no options to go shopping without the temptation of buying beer or wine. I think we owe it to our residents to keep one of our grocery stores alcohol-free.”
However, company attorney Eugene Richard pointed out that other grocery stores are allowed to sell alcohol, including Big Y, Guido’s, the Berkshire Food Co-op, and Gorham & Norton. He explained that this puts Price Chopper at a disadvantage.
Subsequently, at the May 25, 2022 Selectboard meeting, Selectboard Chair Stephen Bannon and Vice Chair Leigh Davis voted to grant the liquor license, while Selectboard members Eric Gabriel and Ed Abrahams voted against granting the company the license. Selectboard member Garfield Reed abstained from the vote because he is an employee of the Plaza Package Store on State Road. A tie vote meant that the license was rejected.
On February 27 of this year, the company applied for a liquor license for a second time. At that meeting, Price Chopper Company President Blaine Bringhurst spoke on behalf of the store. “What we would like to do is take our current existing store, expand it, and rebrand it into a Market 32,” Bringhurst said. “The expansion would not be big but would add about 8,000 square feet to the left of our building in some empty space. The expansion would provide us the opportunity to improve our variety of fresh foods significantly, including in our produce, seafood, and meat departments.”
Bringhurst said that the company would invest $4 million into the store’s expansion. “The way to make this work is to do all of these things, and also have a wine and malt license for the store,” Bringhurst said. “It’s a draw that brings consumers into our stores. As of today, our store is at a disadvantage to the rest of our competitors in the town of Great Barrington who have a license. As you know, wine and malt are a draw year round, most significantly at holidays and for special events. Without the ability to sell it, we lose customer count, and therefore we don’t grow our sales. It’s really important for us in the long-term viability of the store that we can obtain this license and be able to satisfy those customer needs.”
Bringhurst said that if the store loses sales, the company would have to cut back on the store’s operating hours. While he did not directly say it, Bringhurst hinted that this would mean a cutback in working hours for store employees. “We don’t want to affect our teammate’s livelihoods by cutting back hours,” he said. “Once you get into that cycle, and unfortunately it just did, things are rarely in a situation that they get better.”
During the public hearing portion of a subsequent Selectboard meeting on March 27, Great Barrington-based attorney Nicholas Arienti, who represented the company at the hearing, denied that the company would be considering closing the store if it did not get its liquor license. “Despite what the paper has written, there were no threats made,” Arient said at the March 27 meeting. “What Price Chopper is concerned with, from a business perspective, is the long-term viability of this store. What Price Chopper intends to do is provide an additional benefit to their existing customers, and be able to make the experience not only more beneficial but easier for those customers.”
“We certainly did not intend to make any threats,” Bringhurst said. “We certainly do not want to close the store, as it is functioning and serving the community. We just want the opportunity to be competitive with those that we compete against in the marketplace, and do so in a way that will make our customers’ lives easier.”
At the February 27 meeting, however, David Wright, president of the Paragon Realty Group that owns the shopping plaza the store is in, said, “Our discussions with [Price Chopper] have been pretty clear that if [the liquor license] does not happen, then renewal of their lease is very much in question. I can’t stress enough how important Price Chopper is to [the shopping center’s] long-term viability. The grocery anchor is the lifeblood of the other tenants. The reason almost all the small tenants are there is because they want to be by the dominant grocery store where people are coming in a vibrant shopping center with a lot of activity. We don’t think of the possibility of having a shopping center with a 50,000-square-foot hole in it.”
Back at the March 27 public hearing, several residents spoke out against Price Chopper receiving the liquor license, including Edward Domaney, who has owned Domaney’s Liquors and Fine Wines at 66 Main St. since 1973. “A few years ago, licenses were given to Great Barrington as a gift from the state,” Domaney said. “There was a new class of license, not binding to [the town’s] population. We were against [the town] accepting these licenses for a few reasons, but mainly because we had to buy our licenses and work hard to pay for them over the years. But at least [the town] gave [the licenses] to small businesses who deserved it, and that’s what they were designed for. And now, you want to give a license to a store that is part of a 300-chain enterprise and is a very powerful, very wealthy company? If they want to leave, let them go. Someone else will come to town. We’ve worked very hard in our businesses over the years, and they want to help their bottom line, but it will wear us down. Please deny the license.”
At the March 27 public hearing, the only resident who spoke in favor of granting Price Chopper’s application was Michelle Loubert. “Price Chopper has been in the community for years, and my brother just retired from the company,” Loubert said. “When Market 32 opened its beer and wine section in Lenox, you didn’t see Nejaime’s [Wine Cellars] go, ‘Oh my god, it’s going to wipe us out!’ Nejaime’s is doing just fine. For the people who say that we have more than enough beer and wine in the community, to be honest with you, we have more than enough marijuana too, and everybody’s kept their mouths shut on that.”
After the public hearing, the sole vote for the town to grant the liquor license was Bannon, while Davis abstained from the vote along with Reed, and both Gabriel and Abrahams voted against granting the liquor license.
After the March 27 meeting, Abrahams declined to run for another term on the Selectboard, and his seat was eventually taken by Ben Elliott, who was voted onto the board in May.
In her email to The Berkshire Edge on Monday, November 27, Golub reiterated many of the points that other company representatives made about the application. “Price Chopper remains committed to serving the Gt. Barrington community as a retailer, an employer, and a community partner,” Golub wrote in her email. “That said, we are hopeful that the upcoming vote grants us the beer and wine license needed to compete on equal footing in the marketplace. The opportunity to generate beer and wine sales would dramatically increase our traffic and overall profitability, making it possible for us to move forward with our multimillion-dollar investment plans to expand, remodel, and rebrand the store as a contemporary, food and service-focused Market 32.”
In response, The Berkshire Edge asked Golub when the store would start selling alcohol, should the Selectboard approve the license. The Berkshire Edge also asked whether or not the company would cut back on store operations and if the company would consider employee layoffs, should the license not be approved. Golub would not respond via email to either question.
