Goshen Market prepares for competition with new 7-Eleven

Elizabeth Butterfield Contributing Writer

Students will soon have more choices than ever when it comes to convenience-store shopping when a new 7-Eleven opens on Broad Street. But a new store opening in the area brings some problems to local store owners.

Goshen Market owner Tony, who requested his last name not be printed due to pending lawsuits, is worried about the impact the incorporated store will have on his own customers.

Goshen Market has been open since October 2010 at the corner of Goshen and Broad streets. Tony, who has owned convenience stores since 1993, doesn't plan on closing Goshen Market any time soon.

After his first store in Henrico, Crestview Food Store, closed, Tony moved to downtown Richmond for a change of pace.

But with the opening of the new 7-Eleven only paces away from Tony's store, he's worried he may not be able to stay in business.

“I don't want the 7-Eleven there at all,” Tony said. “The small business is the backbone of the nation,” he said. “I work 120 hours a week, as well as my wife ... just to make a living, to keep food on the table, roof over (our) head to make a family at the same time,” he said. “We work hard to keep up.”

Tony's success relies heavily on loyal customers, who still choose to shop at the Goshen Market despite numerous other options. The new 7-Eleven, he thinks, will make that choice even harder.

Student Annie Greene, a loyal Goshen Market customer who has created a Facebook page in support of the protest, is planning a boycott of the new 7-Eleven.

When she found out about the new 7-Eleven being built so near to Goshen

Cary Street Gym one of nine nationally recognized sports facilities

Mason Brown Staff Writer

The Cary Street Gym has been hard at work providing classes, ellipticals, recreational and intramural sports and, of course, zumba. Like the exercise it provides to students, the work produces results.

Most recently, the gym received an award for “Outstanding Sports Facilities.”

VCU’s Cary Street Gym has been listed as one of nine outstanding sports facilities in the nation by the National Intramural-Recreational Sports Association. In the past, other schools that have won the distinction with their facilities include Drexel and Virginia Tech.

The award is given out at the NIRSA Annual Conference and Recreational Exposition, this year in Tampa, Fla. The award “is presented to facilities NIRSA considers to be functional and architectural standards or models by which other collegiate recreational facilities should be measured and from which others can benefit.”

“NIRSA is what recreational sports strive to be the best in,” said Tom Diehl, director of VCU Recreational Sports.

“We received this award because of both our excellent design and programming.”

According to Diehl, the complex has a significant amount of students in- volved in recreational sports programs. Since the renovation, student membership in recreational sports has jumped from 40 percent to 75 percent.

The Cary Street Gym is the center for VCU’s multifaceted recreational sports program, which include club sports, intramurals, exercise classes and several other services provided to students through the program.

“One of the best things about Cary Street Gym is that it is a dedicated recreation facility,” Diehl said. “The students can come every day, and they know it will always be there because it is for them.”

The award rates facilities that have been constructed or renovated within

Market, Greene decided to do something.

“I kind of realized that it will actually make a bigger impact than I thought,” said Greene. “It was kind of a little obvious that they had placed it in that location in order to compete with (Goshen Market) because they do have a little bit of higher prices because they're an independent business,” she said. “They obviously know that they can get more customers.”

Greene created the Facebook page event “Boycott the New 7-11 on Broad St., Keep Goshen Market in Business!” to bring awareness to the effect the new 7-Eleven may have on one of her favorite businesses.

“I kind of wanted to bring the other side of it, with more of the ethics of it,” she said. “You know you'll save money, but at the end of the day, if you shop at (Goshen Market) you're helping this particular family and you're … helping to support an independent business which I think is more important than saving a dollar,” Greene said.

Within 48 hours of creating the event, more than 700 people joined the group.

Greene said she hopes the people involved, especially on the Facebook page, will shop more cautiously.

“They'll have the decision to go to one place or the other and maybe they'll go to (Goshen Market). … that much more support would over time eventually help them and keep them in business,” she said.

The new 7-Eleven is available for franchise, and does not currently have a franchisee but will be staffed by 7-Eleven, Inc. employees until one emerges.

The store is being built on Broad Street to be a “convenient destination for college students of VCU,” 7-Eleven representative Margaret Chabris said. CT the past two years and dedicate a large portion of its square-footage to recreational sports.

The criteria on which it is judged include unique aesthetic of architectural features, relationship between facility design and staffing, innovative construction methods and sustainable features.

The Cary Street Gym opened at 101 S. Linden St. for the spring 2010 semester. The former city auditorium building underwent a $47 million renovation and was constructed to meet LEED Silver standard, a measure for sustainability in buildings. Several parts of the original auditorium can still be seen in places like the entrance and outside walls. CT