Salem's Market hoping to reopen in different form
The owner of Salem's Market in Pittsburgh's Hill District says he hopes to reopen the store, but says it won't look the same.
Salem's Market closed abruptly last week after just a year in business.
Abdullah Salem owns the store and says their business model wasn't working.
At a community meeting in the Hill District on Tuesday night, Salem said he's looking at resizing the store, renting the store to another grocer, or forming some kind of partnership so that the store can reopen.
"What we did really good, like we sold lots of meat," Salem said. "We sold, our meat section did phenomenally probably compared to stores much bigger than us. Our produce section did phenomenally. Our food was just starting. It's just small and it's not the end, we just got to figure a better way."
Salem says he invested $6 million into the building and the market also received around $1.4 million in public funding.
Some say it's up to the community to step up and show that the neighborhood can support a store.
"It's time for us to take a deep look at us as a community," one woman said at the meeting. "Whether or not we want a grocery store and what we can do, whatever grocery store is here, what we can do to help it survive."
Salem says they're no timeline for a possible reopening, but says he's trying to find a solution as soon as possible.