The future of Salem’s Market in the Hill District — whose opening just one year ago was heralded as a hopeful sign for the long-suffering community’s rebirth — appears to be in doubt as the store faces at least a temporary closure next week, followed by a restructuring.
In a statement the URA posted Tuesday, the city’s development agency said, “In partnership with Salem’s Market and the City of Pittsburgh, we’ve learned that it’s not the right time for a full-service grocery store to be supported.”
“We know community members are disappointed by the news of the store pausing its operations, and we share those feelings,” the statement said.
It is not clear what prompted the move or how long that “pause” will last: URA spokeswoman Dana Bohince said that the agency was “unable to share specific details other than that Salem's ... ownership plans to pause operations after Sunday while they evaluate how to best continue to serve the community and options to potentially reformat the store.”
LaKeisha B. Jones, a spokesperson for the grocer, had little more information to share. "Currently what we're doing is pausing for restructuring. And that is as much as I can share with you."
Jones declined to say exactly why Salem's was taking the step, though she said challenges like rising prices and a lack of traffic in the store do "play a role."
Nor could she be sure what the next iteration of the store would look like. She noted Salem's has operated under a variety of configurations in the Strip District and on the Carnegie Mellon University campus, where it operates a mini-market.
She stressed that "there are groceries in the store, so we still encourage people to stop by the Hill District store and shop."
She noted that store hours were being changed. The Hill District store, located at 1850 Centre Avenue, had been open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. But going forward, it will now run on a pared-down schedule of 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. "because of limited staffing and rising prices. We're all dealing with the economic challenges."
The URA statement hailed Salem’s as “an exceptional community champion in the Hill District“ and pledged “to supporting Salem's during this transition as they identify next steps for the future of the Hill District location.”
Meanwhile, the agency said it is “simultaneously considering the community’s needs and will continue to work with partners to seek opportunities for inclusive economic growth in the neighborhood.”
There was little outward sign of an imminent change to the store's operations. Calls earlier in the day from WESA met with puzzled responses from employees, and the store was bustling during an early-afternoon visit by a WESA reporter Wednesday.
There was no visible signage about a closing. One employee at a guest services counter, when asked about the store’s future, said he didn’t know when a closure might take place — but recommended coming back in a week.
Anything more than a brief closure of the store would deal a painful blow to the Hill District, which has languished for more than a half-century after a swath of the neighborhood was demolished to build the Civic Arena in 1961. Once the heart of Black Pittsburgh’s civic and cultural life, the neighborhood has languished for basic amenities for decades, even as the city built and rebuilt sports and entertainment complexes just blocks away.
The community’s status as a food desert, a community without regular access to fresh and healthy food, has been especially vexing. Residents had to travel outside the neighborhood — often to the South Side Giant Eagle — for groceries. That is a time-consuming and sometimes expensive journey for households that can’t afford cars.
City leaders have tried to address the problem and to undo the area’s decades-long legacy of neglect: Prior to Salem’s, the Centre Avenue location housed a Shop ‘N Save, which opened in 2013 with considerable fanfare and $4 million in public financing.
But that store never performed as well as expected: RAND surveys suggested that it never displaced the South Side Giant Eagle as residents’ go-to location. It closed in 2019, with the URA picking the tab for unpaid taxes and the balance of an unpaid loan.
Salem’s was chosen to take over the vacant site, with ample community input, from among four proposals. When his proposal was selected in October 2021, owner Abdullah Salem said he was honored to be a part of the community’s rebirth.
“Failure is not an option,” he said at the time. “Excellence is the only option.”
The store’s opening, which took place last February, was again met with considerable optimism: Salem himself said at the time that, “Everyone's excited about us being here, and we're more excited to be here than they are.”
Public officials were also supportive: Last summer the Biden Administration’s USDA Senior Advisor, Cindy Axne, visited the site to talk up a $200,000 federal investment in the store. The money was spent to buy packaging equipment.
‘It’s so important that we continue to fight for these investments,” said U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, whose office helped to secure the federal funding. The Hill in particular, she said, “has been systematically divested. It’s a community that has faced so many setbacks and broken promises.”
“We deserve grocery stores and grocers who care about our community,” she added.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
