We interrupt your regularly scheduled dose of beauty to bring you an intemperate rant.

Royal Ahold has blighted my neighborhood.

It started when the chinese restaurant in the same building with the Giant Supermarket went out of business. Ahold, which owns the building, didn’t re-lease the space. It stayed empty. A homeless guy has lived in the entryway overhang on and off ever since.

Then the G.C. Murphy five-and-dime closed and they didn’t lease that (much bigger) space either. So that meant 2 large slots—essentially half the block—empty. They painted the windows in an effort to keep it from looking grim, I suppose, but that was little help.

Then they bought the building across from the Giant, booted the CVS and put in their own pharmacy. That was just a stop-gap, however, as gradually they evicted the furniture store, the toy and art store, a beauty parlor, and a dry cleaner/laundry. Then they closed their own pharmacy, and now—the last straw—my local Starbucks is closing on January 29th.

Supposedly, they’re going to build a big fancy new supermarket, a mixed residential and retail center, etc. Yeah, I’ll believe it when I see it. Meanwhile, we’ll either continue to have vacant real estate and empty storefronts (this process has been going on for TEN YEARS at least) or the mess and mayhem of construction, and in any case none of the cosy neighborhood conveniences that made this area so desirable.

Royal Ahold has steadily degraded my environment. Instead of just improving their crappy grocery store, which they could have done at any time, they have systematically sucked the life out of two whole city blocks. It is a very bad example of corporate citizenship.