This story by Aaron Calvin was first published in News & Citizen on Feb. 13
After one grocery operator departed the building following the flood of July 2023, and an attempt to secure another operator fell through, the owners of the former Sterling Market building are pursuing a property buyout.
“We’re extremely disappointed, but we’re hoping we can work with the town and come up with something that’ll be a vital benefit to the community,” said Ernie Pomerleau, president of Pomerleau Real Estate, which owns the property.
The building that formerly housed Johnson’s grocery store has sat empty since it was inundated by floodwaters a year and a half ago. Its former operator, Associated Grocers of New England, initially vowed to return, but the proposal was vetoed by its governing co-op board.
The grocer instead expanded its Vermont footprint with the acquisition of Mac’s Market, a small chain of Vermont grocery stores.
Pomerleau then brought in executives from Shaw’s, a grocery chain with locations throughout New England. Shaw’s was interested in opening a store, according to Pomerleau, but needed the building’s owners to commit to installing flood mitigation measures, including a new floodgate, to ensure its protection against future flooding. With support from the town of Johnson, Pomerleau was pursuing a grant through the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Swift Current program, the purpose of which is to help fund flood mitigation of buildings after a major disaster declaration is made.
As the grant application process plodded along, Pomerleau’s engineers proposed plans to renovate the property in a way that would make it nearly impervious to most future flood events, he said.
But nearly impervious ended up not being enough for Shaw’s, which pulled the plug on the venture at the end of last year, shortly before an attempted mega-merger between parent company Albertsons and another national chain, Kroger, was nixed by a federal judge following a lawsuit by former President Joe Biden’s Federal Trade Commission.
“We had everything in place, but then in the end, they couldn’t get to 100-percent risk free, and I understand that, so here we are, and we don’t have any good, viable options,” Pomerleau said.
The Sterling Market building was built by Pomerleau Real Estate in the 1960s, and had always housed a grocery store, but, located at the confluence of the Lamoille and Gihon rivers, it was flood prone. Flooding in 2011 prompted the departure of Grand Union market.
After that, Pomerleau worked with the town, accessing its revolving loan funds to help set up Sterling Market in 2013, which was originally owned by Mike Comeau before its acquisition in 2017 by Associated Grocers of New England.
Lacking any better alternative, Pomerleau has reluctantly joined other property owners in Johnson seeking to offload their flood-prone homes and businesses and become the 17th property owner to apply for a buyout since 2023.
The former Sterling Market building joins other riverside businesses like the now-vacated Union Bank building and still-operating Johnson Health Center on the pending buyout list. Funding for buyouts can be accessed through the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the state, but the Sterling Market building’s buyout will be handled through the Swift Water program; so far, no property in Johnson damaged in the 2023 flood has successfully finished the buyout process.
Pomerleau said his real estate group, after over half a century, is out of the grocery store business in Johnson, at least for now.
At community forums and town meetings, residents repeatedly expressed concern about returning a grocery store to such a flood-prone site, but Pomerleau has stated that the Sterling Market location was valuable for its central location in the village, and the cost of building a new structure would not be cost-effective considering the profit-generating limitations of a market serving Johnson and the surrounding region.
“We’re going to continue to look at any and all options, but in the meantime, we didn’t want to miss the opportunity where we could do a buyout,” Pomerleau said.
Town response
If Sterling Market’s buyout application is successfully funded, it will become town-owned greenspace, where no other structure can be built.
After discussing the buyout proposal at meetings in January and February, the Johnson Selectboard voted to support Pomerleau’s buyout, despite some concerns from floodplain administrator Scott Meyer, primarily that the property could contain toxic brownfields, which would need to be remediated before it was acquired by the town, and the removal of parking capacity for the neighboring Community Bank.
If completed, the property could contain no impervious structures, meaning the parking lot that serves not just the former market building but also neighboring business would have to be removed.
Though not cited by Meyer, the Johnson Post Office, still operating in the Sterling Market building, would need to find a new home.
According to town administrator Tom Galinat, Meyer expressed some concern that FEMA may not cover those remediation costs, but Vermont Emergency Management recommended the town proceed with the buyout so the property could be included in a scoping project being undertaken by an engineer contracted by the Lamoille County Planning Commission as part of its ongoing series of region-wide flood-mitigation projects.
Support from the town is required for a buyout application to be considered for funding, and the town has supported each property owner that has requested one. Though there was some discussion about the potential for the town to purchase the property to have more flexibility with its future use, the selectboard was in general agreement that the $2.5 million appraised value of the property made such an option unfeasible.
New store coming soon
Meanwhile, the Johnson General Store, a new grocer opening at the former location of Get Yours on Lower Main Street, is slated to open soon, with a tentative mid-March opening date in its sights.
The general store won’t have the capacity of the former Sterling Market but will provide a place for the community to purchase groceries that isn’t a gas station or a dollar store.
Mike Mignone and Haley Newman decided to open a store despite Mignone’s experience in food service after attending discussions around food access that were facilitated as part of last year’s Reimagine Johnson process, a series of post-flood community building forums facilitated by the Vermont Council on Rural Development, have been investing heavily in the store and seeking outside funding.
Mignone has secured a total of $100,000 in two separate loans from the village and town of Johnson revolving loan funds to support the effort. A fundraiser being overseen by the Johnson food access and awareness task force has raised over $4,000 towards the effort, and Mignone has undertaken as much of the renovation work by himself that he can but has had to solicit personal loans to keep himself afloat.
“It’s been pretty hectic, very stressful, but we’re making progress,” Mignone said.
Along with supporting Mignone and Newman’s new general store, task force chair Jesse Whitworth said the group was working on expanding participation in a bulk food buying program, entered talks with the Vermont Studio Center to host community meals on their property and launched a community food-access survey. They’ve also set their sights on the potential for a community center in Johnson and are looking at potentially helping the Johnson Food Shelf expand.
