Grocery’s loss hurts Murfreesboro
Town awaits decision of owners on rebuilding after fire
MURFREESBORO — Residents have had to travel elsewhere for groceries since Murfreesboro’s Cash Saver burned on Dec. 5. Locals have organized aid as the community waits to hear from the corporate office, and civic leaders are wary of how the lack of a grocery will affect visitors coming for the eclipse and the summer tourism season.
Rehkopf’s, based in Texarkana, with Cash Saver stores in Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma, did not respond to a request for comment. The Nashville News-Leader reported last month that the district manager said the company has no intentions of leaving the area, that the fire compromised the structure and that 16 displaced employees were relocated to Prescott and Nashville. Fire departments from six communities responded to the fire.
“Before the insurance company pays, they’re going to investigate,” said Mayor Jim O’Neal. “They’re going to do an investigation to see what they thought caused the fire, to see if it’s covered under their policy.”
Former Mayor Rodney Fagan, a local businessman, was part of a group of investors that helped build the grocery’s building, on the state highway that becomes 13th Street on the north side of town. Rehkopf’s later bought the building and has operated the grocery there for several years; it no longer contained an in-house butcher or deli but sold produce, dairy, packaged meat and dry goods.
“It’s about a 14,000-squarefoot building,” Fagan said. “A real nice store, plenty big for here.”
Murfreesboro is the home of Crater of Diamonds State Park and is south of Lake Greeson. With just under
1,500 residents, the tourism economy has increased in importance over the years as timber and agriculture have faded. It’s in the April 8 eclipse’s path of totality, and the population surges during the summer because of the area’s scenic beauty.
“In April, we may have as many as 40,000 people in town with no grocery store,” said O’Neal, given that the city contains the state park that had 159,579 visitors last year.
Without its Cash Saver, residents have mostly been traveling to Nashville, 15 minutes away, which has a Walmart Supercenter and another Cash Saver. Murfreesboro dollar stores have helped fill in the gap but do not offer the selection residents want.
Fagan said Murfreesboro’s civic leadership is confident someone will reopen a grocery store if Rehkopf’s doesn’t, given the strength of the local tourism industry. The city’s population has declined, however, and while two groceries once operated there, he doesn’t think two could be supported now.
O’Neal said some investors have reached out to him already but declined to name them, saying, “There’s enough respect for the Rehkopf family that if they’re going to build back, we’re going to work with them, wait and see what they do. In the meantime, if they do build back, it may take a year. But no one wants to come back in and be in competition, back to a two-store town.”
Harvest Regional Food Bank trucks are being dispatched from Texarkana to serve low- and fixed-income locals, and a new grocery will soon open in Delight, giving residents in southwestern Pike County an option. The Branch Oil Company market, also on 13th Street, has added a cooler for perishable and other goods. But overall, Murfreesboro is in limbo. Seniors are either waiting for someone to take them to Nashville for grocery shopping or they navigate Arkansas 27 through the Ouachitas on their own.
“I have 89- and 90-year-olds driving to the center still, but driving to Nashville’s a whole new ballgame,” said Vickie Hutson, who manages Murfreesboro’s Central Arkansas Development Council senior center. “One of my client’s daughters called me. She lives up north. She said, ‘My daddy’s driving to Nashville to buy bananas, and he’s nearly had two wrecks.’ I went to school with her, and I said, ‘But baby, I can’t get him to stop.’
“There’s only so much I can do,” Hutson said. “We can offer to try to pick up stuff for them, but they don’t really want to give you their money and trust you, and I get that.”
Hutson said unorganized requests from less-mobile community members for others to do their grocery shopping in Nashville are unsustainable. Though there are discussions of organizing grocery buying bus trips to Nashville, Hutson’s homebound clients are struggling. Some with home health care can have aids who shop for them, but that adds up, taking time away from other tasks when they only help for an hour a day three days a week. She had thought seniors could put online orders in at Walmart for employees there to bring home to Murfreesboro, but clients in their 80s and 90s won’t do that.
“If we had any kind of a time frame for us to try to be able to communicate — right now, we’re looking at a long time out,” Hutson said. “In the long term, if we can’t get some fixes, some of my homebound people are going to be at risk of not being able to stay at home. A lot of them don’t have family. My churches here in town deliver two routes of home-delivered meals for me while we have three out of town.”
As it stands, Murfreesboro leaders are unsure how much they are going to lose on sales tax revenue without a grocery store, though O’Neal said the city can withstand a hit without immediately having to curtail services. The leaders said they are ready to engage with state economic development agencies once they know Rehkopf’s plans.
“I know the state looks at large numbers when they start talking about economic development — large numbers for all the big cities and stuff like that. But you can’t tell me they don’t have small stuff come their way,” said Penny Lamb, Murfreesboro’s recorder and treasurer, who also runs an RV park with her husband. “I’ve lived in this town my entire life. I’ve watched the population go from 2,500 down to 1,500. The only reason we don’t feel like a city of 1,500 people is because of the amount of tourists who are here on a daily basis.”
Meanwhile, speculation and opinions about the grocery predicament is the talk of the town.
“I went down to the senior citizens center; it’s almost a tradition, we go down and we bag. And when Harvest Food comes through, we go down and load the cars up. Mayors have always done that,” O’Neal said. “There were 15 seniors there. ‘Tell us where we’re at with the grocery store.’ They are concerned, but they’re not angry. They’re just like me. They’re trying to solve it: ‘Have you contacted this group?’ ‘What about this guy?’ I saw a Walmart family market somewhere, that looks like what we could use.’
“They do understand that we have to wait on the Rehkopf family to make a decision, ‘But as soon as they do, let us know, and we’ll all get to helping find someplace.’ But there’s no anger or confrontation; everybody’s just seeking information.”