Downtown Tucson could see the opening of its first full-service grocery store in 42 years by December.
The former and current owners of the Rincon Market are joining forces to open a 6,000-square-foot grocery, with a full line of meat, produce and dairy products, in the former Beowulf Alley Theatre at 11 S. Sixth Ave.
Although a dwindling number of small markets remain in the neighborhoods ringing downtown, this will be the first full-service grocery in downtown proper since the Grand Central Public Market, on South Stone at Broadway, shut down in 1972.
A grocery has been near the top of the city’s downtown-redevelopment wish list for more than a decade, as a way to attract residents. (See related story on Page A7.)
Paul Cisek, former owner of the Rincon Market, said a grand opening is planned for December, roughly one year after the Beowulf Alley Theatre held its last performance.
The store will cater to downtown’s eclectic makeup, Cisek said, and offer a variety of specialty and organic foods, as well as grocery store staples.
“It’s going to be a complete market,” Cisek said. “We are going to serve as many parts of the demographics as possible — the neighbors, the visitors and the workers.”
Plans also call for a cafe with a sidewalk patio and bicycle delivery service, Cisek said.
Cisek and his partner, Ron Abbott, current owner of the Rincon Market, expect to put in $800,000 to $1 million in improvements to the space. The two had been scouting sites for a downtown grocery separately but decided to form a partnership about two months ago.
“We just happened to have dinner together and we decided we would be partners in one location,” Cisek said. “It was serendipitous to the max. And we said: ‘What the heck? Let’s do it.’ ”
Cisek and his wife, Christi, will run the day-to-day operations at the new market while Abbott and his wife, Kelly, will focus on the Rincon Market, on East Sixth Street and North Tucson Boulevard, which Abbott expects to reopen in mid-May after a devastating fire.
Cisek, who sold the Rincon Market to the Abbotts in 2008, said he will apply the same approach to running the downtown store that he did when he turned around the Anza Marketplace in Tubac.
“What we did was, we got local,” Cisek said. “We addressed the needs of the individual community, as opposed to trying to address the needs of the snowbirds. And that made all the difference in the world to the Tubac market.”
Cisek said he wants to create a similar “community hub” in Tucson.
“We got back in touch with the community,” he said. “And that’s what we want to do for downtown.”
Abbott said he has been looking to expand into downtown for three years, but the development necessary to sustain a grocery store didn’t exist until recently.
He said with student housing and complexes such as the Herbert apartments up and running, coupled with the pending streetcar opening and a potential hotel, now’s the time.
“We feel the timing is right to do this,” Abbott said. “It’s something Tucson has needed for a long time.”
OTHERS AGREE
“It is the one piece that has been missing from getting out of your car and living an urban lifestyle,” said Michael Keith, CEO of the Downtown Tucson Partnership.
Keith, who worked with Cisek and Abbott to bring the store downtown, said it fulfills the promise of a revitalized downtown where people can “live, work and play.”
It could also propel further development in the city’s core, he said.
“This is really a turning point for downtown,” Keith said. “This is the moment when all future housing projects and the Ronstadt transit (project) become viable in a way they weren’t before.”
The closest full-service groceries to downtown now are the Safeway on East Broadway and Campbell Avenue and the Food City on West St. Mary’s Road and North Grande Avenue.
Mayor Jonathan Roths-
child said the store will break up this “food desert” and help bolster the surrounding neighborhoods.
“We just really need it,” Rothschild said. “It’s the next step in making downtown thrive.”
City Councilman Steve Kozachik used the market announcement as a clarion call for everyone with a stake in downtown to pull together.
“This project is way larger than the great news about the market,” he said. It opens the door to “transforming what’s now an alley into an entirely new design concept, and adding value to the (proposal) that’s out on the Ronstadt Transit Center,” he said.
Kozachik said the city and others need to adjust to a new normal when it comes to downtown’s renaissance.
HONOR THE PAST
The grocery store will be called Johnny Gibson’s Downtown Market, a homage to the late entrepreneur who stuck with downtown through the high and low points since the late 1940s.
“We are going to tastefully and subtly weave his life story and his contributions to the downtown area into the look and the feel of the store,” Cisek said. “It’s kind of a tip of the hat to all of the people who have suffered through downtown’s ups and downs before all of the new stuff came in.”
Johnny Gibson opened his barbershop on Sixth Avenue in 1949 and ran it, and subsequent businesses, until he retired in 2001, said Steve Gibson, Johnny’s son.
Steve said his family is thrilled with proposed décor of the building.
“It will give a sense of history,” Steve said. “A lot of things get revitalized, and the history is forgotten. This market is going to touch on that and be a great place for conversation and take us back in time a little bit. It will be a huge benefit to the people of downtown.”
