What makes this Alabama grocery store unique
Greer’s St. Louis Market is the 29th store for the Mobile-based grocery company that serves communities in Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. (Dennis Washington / Alabama NewsCenter)
Lucy Greer can’t help but smile when talking about her family’s newest grocery store.
“We heard that it’s being called Club Greer’s, which is fun,” Greer said. “We are so happy to see the joy of not only the community that lives and works down here but there’s so many areas from Baldwin County and Mobile County, residents that are just coming to visit this part of the city. That’s exciting.”
How Greer’s St. Louis Market is changing downtown Mobile from Alabama NewsCenter on Vimeo.
Greer’s St. Louis Market is the 29th store operated by the Greer family in Alabama, Mississippi and Florida, but what makes this store unique begins with its design.
“This place was a funeral home and then an auto parts store,” Greer said. “To develop it into an operating grocery store, we feel like the outcome has been really great.”
The opening of Greer’s St. Louis Market marks the return of a grocery store to downtown Mobile. Ironically, Mobile’s first downtown grocery store opened in 1916 when Lucy Greer’s great-great-grandfather, Autry Greer, started the family business at the corner of Water and Saint Michael streets.
“We’ve always wanted to come back,” said Greer, who is also the company’s spokesperson. “We just felt like it was the right time for us to invest in this area of the community.”
Greer’s return to downtown Mobile is part of an effort by many to revitalize the downtown area. Fred Rendfrey, director of Downtown Economic Development for the Downtown Mobile Alliance, said federal and state tax breaks for the reuse of historic buildings give developers and business owners incentive to reinvest in abandoned structures.
“When those tax credits are twinned, the basis of the project is about the same as if it were new construction,” Rendfrey said. “They help level the playing field between new construction and affording the adaptive reuse.”
Rendfrey said historic tax credits have catalyzed about 30 projects in downtown Mobile, representing more than $130 million of capital investment. He said projects like the opening of Greer’s St. Louis Market are helping Mobile realize growth goals.
“Getting the residential population back downtown where we want it and need it to be is going to be critical to helping create this vibrant 24/7 economy we visualize for downtown Mobile,” Rendfrey said. “This is the latest and greatest of that. The Greer’s St. Louis Market is sort of a culmination of some of the investment and growth in the multifamily housing that we’ve seen over the last few years. More than that, it took a local business owner to see the vision and to see that we were on the cusp of really getting the rooftops to where we needed them to be to get the retail to follow that. We’re just excited to see this beautiful product.”
Greer said she and her team are thankful for the help and support they’ve received.
“There’s so many people that made this happen,” Greer said. “Everyone was so supportive and helped us get exactly what we needed to get.”
To learn more about Greer’s St. Louis Market or its other 28 locations, visit greers.com. To learn more about how the Downtown Mobile Alliance is helping catalyze redevelopment projects in the downtown area, visit downtownmobile.org.
