Yourway
April 11, 2013
Vol. 13, No. 14
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Sharbot Lake to be the new location of a Mike Dean’s Super Food Store by Jeff Green
I
t’s official. Loblaws has sold their Sharbot Lake Freshmart store to Mike Dean’s Super Food Stores, a company based in Winchester, Ontario. A press release confirming the long anticipated purchase was released late Monday, and the cahngeover took place after the store closed n Tuesday at 6:00 pm. “Mike Dean’s Super Food Stores is pleased to announce the purchase of the existing grocery store property, grocery store operation, and valued staff members located at 1039 Elizabeth Street, Sharbot Lake to now operate as Sharbot Lake Market” the release says. In an accompanying note, Gordon Dean, the son and partner of company founder Mike Dean, said, “We anticipate a two week outright closure followed by a re-opening of the remodelled fresh department only area within 14 days. A full update, remodel, and reopening of the complete store is expected by May 24th. It has been obvious that something was happening to the Freshmart store in Sharbot Lake. Since January 1st the store had been cutting down on its stock. By mid-February banks of freezers had been emptied out and even the shelves of canned goods were thinning out, amid reports that an offer to buy the store had been made in mid-December and was awaiting final sign off by both parties. Although it was run as a franchise store by Chuck Belcher of Crow Lake, the Sharbot Lake Freshmart did not have the same corporate structure of other grocery stores in the region, such as the Northbrook, Verona, and Sydenham Foodland stores and the Plevna Freshmart. In those cases the franchisees own the building where the store is located, and operate them under buying agreements with large grocery corporations. Upgrades and rebuilds of those stores have taken place in recent years, undertaken by the franchise owners.
In Sharbot Lake, Loblaws Inc. owned the building, and two successive franchise owners had been unable to convince the company to invest in, upgrade or modernize the facility. The business has suffered as a result. That will all change with the purchase of the property by Mike Dean’s Supestore. Plans are already underway to expand the store to the rear of the property. The Deans are not affiliated with any of the national chains. They do all their purchasing directly from producers, and also do some private labelling through the Nancy’s Fancy trademark. There are Mike Dean’s Superstores in Winchester, Chesterville, Vankleek Hill, Bourget, and a recently opened store in Almonte. They have a warehouse in Winchester that supplies the entire store network. Opening a store in Sharbot Lake is part of a north and westward expansion of Mike Dean’s Superstores, after opening their Almonte store just last month. (see the notice from Mike Dean’s Super Food Store on page 3) This latest purchase marks a further evolution of the grocery business that goes back several decades in the same location. The store was at one time affiliated with IGA, and then M&M. John and Erlene Lee, who owned a competing Red and White store in the building that is now occupied by the St. Lawrence College Employment Centre, bought the store in 1980 and moved their food store to the larger building a few months later. The Lees were affiliated with National Grocers, the parent company of Loblaws, and they ran the store as a Valumart until they sold the building and the business to National Grocers in 1993. It was run as a Valumart and then a Freshmart under Brett Harvey for 12 years, before Chuck Belcher took over eight years ago.
The shelves at the Sharbot Lake Freshmart were almost empty on Tuesday afternooon, hours before the changeover.
Medical aid trip to Honduras: Student nurse Rachel Neadow recently traveled to Honduras with a team to bring medical assistance to people there. See story on page 7.
Kingston staff report urges NEB to go slow on pipeline by Jeff Green report by Cynthia Beach, the Commissioner of Sustainability and Growth with the City of Kingston, raises questions about a proposal by Enbridge to reverse the flow of crude oil in pipeline 9B, which passes through rural Kingston and Storrington District of South Frontenac. Currently the oil flows to the west from Montreal, and Enbridge wants to start moving oil from the west to refineries in Montreal and points east. The proposal by Enbridge, which is currently the subject of a National Energy Board (NEB) hearing process, includes increasing the flow of oil through the pipeline, which has been in place since 1976, by 25% to 300,000 barrels per day. As well, in addition to the light crude oil that has been coursing through the pipeline for 37 years, Enbridge is asking the NEB for permission to transport Diluted Bitumen from the Alberta tar sands through pipeline 9b. In her report, Beach pointed out that there is always a statistical risk of leaks wherever there is an oil pipeline. That risk amounts to an expectation, for the Kingston/Frontenac stretch of the line, of one incident every 285 years related to pipeline corrosion, and one incident every 20 years for all reasons. The other reasons including cracking, equipment failure, material defects, environmental incidents and human impacts. Since 1976, there have been 12 leaks and one rupture in the entire stretch of pipeline 9b between Hamilton and Montreal, none of which occurred in the section that passes through Kingston and Frontenac. The most serious incident was a rupture near the terminus at Montreal, when close to 3,000 cubic metres of oil spilled. The total spillage from all the other incidents combined is 50 cubic metres, and no lasting environmental damage is noted along the line.
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However, Beach raised some potential concerns with the Enbridge plan. The first has to do with the proposal to transport diluted bitumen. While pipeline industry scientists claim the substance is no more corrosive than light crude oil there are scientists who disagree. If it is determined the bitumen is more corrosive, the potential for pipeline failure would increase. “There continues to be sufficient conflict between the science in regard to the relative corrosivity between conventional crude oil and dil-bit [diluted bitumen] that the US Congress has commissioned an assessment of the matter by the Transportation Research Board. Clarity on this issue is expected with the conclusion on the US Transportation Research Board’s work scheduled for the end of 2013,” Cynthia Beach wrote. She recommended that the City request that the NEB wait until the study is released before deciding whether to approve Enbridge’s application. A second concern relates to the fact that pipeline 9b has not had a “hydrostatic test”, which is a measure of the integrity of the pipe when under maximum pressure, since 1997. In her report, Cynthia Beach recommends that the City “request the NEB to consider the merits of a new hydrostatic test as a demonstration of the integrity of the line 9b pipeline.” The report makes two other recommendations, one dealing with training for emergency responders, and the other with ensuring that Enbridge provides a $1 billion surety against potential environmental impacts in the event of a major spill. The cleanup for an Enbridge pipeline spill on the Kalamazoo River in Michigan state cost over $765 million in the two years following the spill itself, and the cleanup is still ongoing.
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