There’s something sad about the increasingly bitter relationship between Rogers Park and Jewel Food Stores. Jewel needs customers and Rogers Park’s got them. Rogers Park needs groceries and Jewel’s got them. But in August Jewel closed the neighborhood’s last remaining full-service grocery store, a 19,000-square-foot Jewel at 1425 W. Morse. And ever since, residents, activists, and politicians have been pleading with Jewel to bring one back.
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The abandoned, boarded-up Jewel, its parking lot cluttered with debris, is worse than an eyesore; it stands as an emblem for the neighborhood’s general decline. Indeed, much of the talk in and around Rogers Park has to do with gangs, drugs, trash, negligent landlords, panhandlers, gunfire, and robbery. Last week’s Reader featured an essay about the neighborhood by Dina Elenbogen, who described moving after her Rogers Park apartment was broken into. “During the past few years, most of us have left for other enclaves of false security,” Elenbogen wrote. “Everyone has left because being a victim gets tiresome, like watching the same dull northern light seen through the window for too long, knowing it will only come so close, but that sometimes even that is too much.”
Such talk irritates the hell out of Moore and other boosters. As they see it, Rogers Park is no better or worse in terms of crime and grime than any other neighborhood in the city. “Did you know that Rogers Park has the third lowest crime rate of any police district in the city?” says Moore. “That’s right–third lowest. But you wouldn’t know that from reading the articles about us. You’d think it was Fort Apache, Rogers Park, out here. Yes, I know, people in Rogers Park have had their homes burglarized. I don’t minimize that. My own home was burglarized, for goodness sakes. But crime is a fact of life all over the country, not just in Rogers Park. I don’t think you should condemn a whole neighborhood just because your home was burglarized.”
Responding to speculation about why Foodworks shut down, Michael Kriston says his brother “didn’t leave this location because the market was bad. He left because he was very busy with Oak Street. Since we moved in we’ve had tremendous response. I got a bank loan to renovate this place, so obviously other people share my optimism. We get calls from people who say, ‘Thank you for opening.’ People want to see this store succeed.”
DePaola assured the residents that the Osco would carry some staples, like milk, cheese, and bread, but the residents say that’s not good enough. “You can already get milk or cheese at the Morse Market or at the produce store on Morse,” says Friend. “But you can’t do your weekly shopping there. You can’t compare-shop between brands. You can’t have the kind of grocery store that makes a neighborhood at an Osco.”
“I’ve been told that the big price markup is not so much on food but on items like homewares and pharmaceuticals, things you can’t fit into the smaller stores. I guarantee you, if the store on Morse had 60,000 square feet, Jewel wouldn’t close it.”
