Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Dillons grocery store reopens in Greensburg, Kansas

I usually don't report on grocery store openings in western Kansas, but today's reopening of a Dillons in Greensburg, Kansas is certainly newsworthy.

As with 95 percent of the town of 1,500 people, Dillons was destroyed when an EF5 tornado struck Greensburg shortly before 10pm on May 4, 2007. 11 people were killed.

Two months later I traveled to Greensburg for My Kansas Kronikles series. Most of the rubble had been cleared away--and there was surely a great deal of it--and the reconstrucation had just started.

The Dillons store was just a frame.

It's hard for a town to survive without a grocery store, so huge "Well, done!" salutes goes out to Dillon's this evening. Western Kansas towns, those with meatpacking plants being a notable exception, have been struggling with depopulation for decades, so Dillon's could have just left, blaming "a poor business model."

But Dillons stayed.

Related posts:

My Kansas Kronikles: Greensburg, the fall and rise, part one
My Kansas Kronikles: Greensburg, the fall and rise, part two
My Kansas Kronikles: Greensburg, the fall and rise, part three
My Kansas Kronikles: Greensburg, the fall and rise, part four
My Kansas Kronikles: Greensburg, the fall and rise, part five
My Kansas Kronikles: Greensburg, the fall and rise, part six

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