Last week, I wrote about a petition started by neighbors opposed to a 7-Eleven coming to 14th and Florida. One of their arguments is that there are already many similar businesses nearby — convenience stores, groceries and markets.
I made a map of the 7-Elevens and found there are many less than a mile from two planned stores at 14th and Florida and 14th and Quincy. (The proposed 7-Elevens are red, existing green, and CVS and Walgreens the tan dots.)
There are eight 7-Elevens and five CVS locations within 0.8 miles of the one planned for 14th and Florida while the 7-Eleven coming to 14th and Quincy has three 7-Elevens and two CVS locations within 0.7 miles. The closest existing 7-Elevens to the planned ones in both cases are 5 blocks away.
Here’s the full argument on the anti-7-Eleven petition, which as of writing is up to 235 signers:
We are a community, we are a neighborhood, we are families and friends. We care about how our neighbors treat each other, how the streetscape is maintained and we care to improve our surroundings.
We are happily satisfied with the neighborhood retail services today such as: Streets, Smucker Farms, Yes Organic, CVS and TraderJoes, yet we are very concerned about 7/11 entering our neighborhood. We believe that 7/11 will diminish and detract from our neighborhood, nor do we see it adding any value to our lives. We feel that, at best, 7/11 will just cannibalize existing businesses, assuming anyone was to patronize the establishment. Therefore, this location is not only unsatisfactory to the neighbors, but it is also a bad investment for 7/11. A bad investment for 7/11 is also a bad bet for the landlord jeopardizing their investment too. No one wins in this scenario.
If you care about the future of our neighborhood and don’t want to see a 7/11, or worse, a failed 7/11 take up a prominent corner, then please object by endorsing this petition.
Now I get why a franchisee would want to open a 7-Eleven: they’re a known chain brand and you probably get most stuff provided to you, ready to go. But there are so many of them already. I would much prefer these were something else: a local market, a restaurant, a coffee shop (upper 14th could certainly use one) or pretty much anything else aside from a cell phone store or a bank, which are both terrible for foot traffic.
And another reason is that I don’t want this area to be full of chains. At least they are sticking to 14th Street, but our area doesn’t need to look like everywhere else. I wrote about this at length in 2011, but I think it’s a bit different: especially at 14th and Quincy, there are no chains around, just interesting local businesses. 14th and Florida is the mostly same way, but there are a few chains around there.
I just wish we had some variety. And I really love Slurpees, so I’m going against my interest here. What do you think? More 7-Elevens?
