When Patz’s Market in Hebron closed in November 2017, the small town in southern Porter County was left without a grocery store.
The family-owned store had been a staple in the community for more than 50 years and was located in the Country Square Plaza shopping center on the city’s north side when it closed; the location is now home to First Church of Hebron.
“If my wife tells me to stop for a gallon of milk, potatoes and a loaf of bread, normal stuff, I had to stop at two or three locations along the way,” said Hebron Town Council President John Spinks Jr., who represents Ward 3.
The closest grocery retailers are in Valparaiso and Crown Point, a 30-minute drive from Hebron. And while the town has an assortment of convenience stores and the like, Patz’s closure left the population without a full-service grocery store.
Spinks and other community leaders spent the last five years trying to find a grocer to replace Patz’s, looking at 25 retailers before DG Market, part of the Dollar General family of stores, decided to build a store there. The store, on Costin Drive and Main Street on the town’s south end, is slated to open in August.
The store, Spinks said, will be 13,000 or 14,000 square feet.
“That is going to provide groceries for those who can’t get out of town and for those who want a convenient place to shop,” he said.
But having a local grocery store will also provide much more than that, bringing a closeness to the community that comes with access to food, Spinks said. When you’re hungry, he added, it’s culturally difficult to get that feeling.
“I think it’s important for everyone to get food. I don’t want to be a food desert anymore,” he said.
Approximately one in six region residents live in a food desert, limiting access to fresh, nutritious food for thousands of families, Victor Garcia, president and CEO of the Food Bank of Northwest Indiana, said in an email to the Post-Tribune. “The Food Bank of Northwest Indiana applauds the leadership in Hebron for working diligently to ease the barrier of access to the foods we all need to survive and thrive.”
Having access to fresh produce and healthy food has a direct impact on health, said Jen Trowbridge, president and CEO of CoAction, a social service agency offering an array of supports for the region’s residents.
“This is a big win because this allows Hebron to get access in their city,” she said.
The grocery store will help augment the services offered by CoAction. “We’ve been compensating,” Trowbridge said. “Some of our programming has been designed around not having these supports.”
Trowbridge noted the Produce for Better Health program, which is coordinated in this area by CoAction and delivers fresh produce to older adults. Participants have seen an improvement in blood pressure and other health metrics.
During his search for a grocer to replace Patz’s, Spinks said one merchant wanted an existing 50,000-square-foot building and a monthly guarantee of $500,000 in business.
Though Hebron’s population is only around 3,750 people, Boone Township’s population is about 6,500 people, “so it’s not as astronomical as you might think,” Spinks said, though the demographics, facility needs aside, still weren’t enough to bring in a large-scale store.
Spinks still remembers a power outage during a 2008 snowstorm, when he shopped at Patz’s and was told he could pay later.
“I will be forever grateful for the Patz family. We would have liked someone from their family to take it over,” he said.
Some businesses, Spinks said, did what they could to increase their fresh food offerings after the market closed but it wasn’t enough to bridge the gap for most residents.
“Even Dollar General put in a few coolers and rows of things,” he said. “It’s not ideal but we’re grateful they were able to do it.”
Both Spinks and Justin Albright, an at-large member of the town council and the body’s vice president, checked out other DG Markets to confirm that one would be a good fit for Hebron. Spinks went to one in Spring Lake, east of Indianapolis in Hancock County, and Albright and his wife Joy looked at the store in Elwood, northeast of Indianapolis, in Tipton and Madison counties.
At the time, Albright said, the town also was exploring Save A Lot, which has stores in Kouts and South Haven. Albright said his wife Joy came along to visit the DG Market since she does most of the shopping.
“Both have their pros and cons but we were really impressed with the DG Market,” he said, adding it was clean and had a good selection of name-brand items and fresh produce. “Overall, it was mostly a grocery store.”
Albright also talked to the clerks at the DG Market about residents shopping there for most of their groceries.
“Their run-of-the-mill groceries? They would go there based on their selection and prices,” he said.
Finding another grocer, Albright said, has been a priority for the town council and the town’s residents.
“We don’t get to pick who comes but we’re happy somebody is coming back to the community,” he said.
The Dollar General on the town’s north side will remain once DG Market opens, Spinks said, though the new market will carry some of the cleaning and other supplies sold at Dollar General.
“We’re told 90% of the store is going to be groceries,” he said.
A public relations representative for Dollar General said in an email to the Post-Tribune that the company is doing its due diligence for the new DG Market.
“In selecting store sites, we take a number of factors into consideration, carefully evaluating each potential new store location to ensure we can continue to meet our customers’ price, value and selection needs,” the email stated. “We believe the addition of each new store provides positive economic benefits including additional access to affordable products for customers; the creation of new jobs for local residents and career development opportunities for our employees; the generation of additional tax revenue for the City; and the ability for local nonprofits, schools and libraries to apply for literacy and education grants through the Dollar General Literacy Foundation.”
According to the Dollar General website, the company’s stores that have fresh produce offer “approximately 80% of the produce categories most grocery stores provide,” including tomatoes, apples, salad mixes, strawberries, potatoes and more. The site notes that “Dollar General Market is here to ensure families can find the ingredients they need for balanced meals at affordable prices.”
A groundbreaking for the new store took place in December, Spinks said.
“Logistically, I could do all my weekly shopping there,” he said, adding that’s what town leaders wanted in a grocer.
With new subdivisions and a growing population, Spinks said the town might eventually have the population to support a larger grocery store.
alavalley@chicagotribune.com