Goodbye Star Market – you don’t know how much you will be missed.

The Winter Hill area has seen its share of change over the last 30 to 35 years and has had to fight the whole “Winter Hill Gang” characterizations for so long that nobody ever notices when important events happen which affect the entire neighborhood of thousands who live within five blocks of the intersection of Temple and Broadway.

Arguably, this area of the city is busier and more utilized by its immediate neighbors than any ‚Äúsquare‚Äù in the city – other than Davis of course. We see it every day – people who don’t live that just don’t see it – and that’s a shame.

The Star Market looks like a ghost store – empty shelves and all – and when they close the doors in the very near future, it will leave a void in that neighborhood that will be felt for years to come. The saddest part is that because the area isn’t a ‚Äúsquare‚Äù it will be forgotten – unless the city steps in and aggressively encourages some kind of redevelopment of the site immediately or is able to entice another supermarket (like Foodmaster for example) to move in.

If there is any doubt on the direct impact that store has made on the neighborhood, just think for a minute about how Star Market did business since the departure of Brigham’s over a decade ago. It was well known for years that in the entire chain of Start Market stores, the Winter Hill store had across the board markups on just about every single item on its shelves and they could get away with it, because the neighborhood would pay whatever price they had to have the convenience of a store within a few blocks. That one single space of real estate and the store that sits there has become such a permanent fixture to the neighborhood that most people can’t remember what was on that site prior to Star Market and its surroundings.

Before the store was built there by the Jewel Corporation (Star Market/Osco/Brigham’s, etc.), it was the Winter Hill Theater (which was torn down) and someone mentioned that there was a Woolworth’s somewhere on that site as well (although we don’t remember exactly where). So think about it – other than the crappy little strip-mall up the street (built in the 1980s), the only other significant development in the area has been the Cambridge Health Alliance building where the old Marshall Hall stood – at the corner of Marshall and Broadway – next door to the infamous ‚Äúgarage‚Äù we all know and love.

Some of us have been residents of this neighborhood since before the Star Market was there – we would love to see a new Public Safety building built on this site – and can only hope that if the city won’t utilize the space itself, will at least step up for neighborhood and make sure that something worth-while is done on that location for the entire city’s benefit, not just the residents of Winter Hill.