It is indeed enormously sad to see the closing of Hi-Lo supermarket, a constant in the Latino community for many years. Yet, it is also sad that several voices in our community have lashed out against Whole Foods for wanting to inhabit this space by using words like “sinister social engineering.”
Those who raise their voices in outrage to such a level need to step back, take a deep breath and ask themselves some hard questions that are more in line with economic reality. Who in this community is willing to invest the amount of money, time and resources necessary to buy Hi-Lo and keep it running? In this economy, it might be at a low profit level, remember.
Hi-Lo was wonderful while we had it, and we can dream all we want about the what-ifs and if-onlys. But no savior is stepping forward, and in their absence I would suggest that we could do a whole lot worse than Whole Foods, which in other communities has proved itself to be a responsive and responsible neighbor.We still have a vibrant and ethnically diverse community that can now gather itself to leverage its energies in the direction of moving Whole Foods toward serving our entire community in unusual and unique ways.
Paul Wesel
Jamaica Plain