Ever since the announcement that King Soopers would be the anchor store at the Eastbridge Town Center, Stapleton residents have been holding meetings, starting Facebook pages, emailing Forest City and King Soopers, and everything else in between to give feedback or to possibly stop the grocer from moving into Eastbridge. “I have been to the SUN meeting, the Forest City and Kroger meeting, and have held rallies in my backyard,” said resident John Potter. “But every time we have meetings, or give extensive feedback, they never come back with anything that we need. No answers, or no improvements as far as we are concerned.”
Potter should have been clued into Forest City and Soopers lack of interest in community feedback from the last community meeting the two companies attended. At one point in the meeting after listening to several residents repeat the same critical comments of King Soopers, King Soopers VP and representative Thad Ortner took the podium. Ortner covered his ears, and started shaking his head side to side while yelling, “La! La! La! La! I am not listening to you!” over and over for about 30 seconds, and then simply sat down and produced an arrogant smirk. Ortner was not available for comment after the meeting or for this article.
“I think everyone was shocked,” said meeting attendee Mike Becker. “Not because of what he said. A lot of us know they don’t care about our opinions and are simply going through the motions. What was shocking was how the message was delivered. It was pretty childish and dickish.” Other attendees agreed. “It was just crazy,” said Kamie Olds. “It did shut everyone up, I will say. So, if his goal was to get people to stop ripping on King Soopers and stop repeating themselves, then I guess he did a great job.”
Where Ortner’s plan succeeded, it also may have failed. “I can tell you that the community is more enraged and united as ever,” said Potter. “Once word spread how things were handled by the Soopers delegates, hundreds and hundreds of people have since joined our causes through Facebook.” Potter is unsure if this increase of anger and opposition against Soopers will make a difference, but they will continue to fight. “We will fight until the last Soopers brick is placed in its permanent structure. In fact, even after it is built, if we have to picket the place until they go out of business, we will!” An unnamed Soopers source has told The Stapletonion that Soopers remains as dedicated as ever to not listen to members of the Stapleton community. Looks like we have ourselves a little Havana St. standoff. ]]>