Chicago’s new monster Whole Foods caters to the automobile

Image by swanksalot via Flickr

It’s not like Chicago has a lot of natural environment to destroy, but if it did, this would be the way to go about it: a new 75,000 square-foot grocery store with no less than 42 check-out lanes and 400 gridlock inducing parking spaces. Imagine the power used by the heating and cooling and lighting systems, the greenhouse gases emitted by the pilgrims trekking there to load their sport utility vehicles with fresh commodities. But this new grocery store, slated to open in five days, claims to be good for the environment. It’s a Whole Foods.

Chicago’s Lincoln Park Whole Foods will be the third-largest Whole Foods in the world, following the London store (100,000 square feet) and the Austin, Texas mothership (80,000). Once again, the Second City can proudly announce, we’re number three!

Enter any Whole Foods and you’ll find, somewhere within in its ecosystem, a sign announcing all the good things it does for the Earth. Besides putting natural and organic products into carts pushed by the well-heeled, and thus encouraging a thriving market for them (proving that capitalist is not the opposite of environmentalist), the Whole Foods will be built with the materials that the Earth most gently offers up to developers. Its array of recycling bins may be the best system yet for inducing guilt at sending so much as a napkin to the landfill. And if, during your trek across the vast expanses of this commodity jungle, you should have to visit the facilities, you’ll find a state of the art blow dryer that dries your hands almost instantly, yet warmly, and without being as annoying as hell.

The finished product as envisioned by its makers. Notice there's only one whole car at the Whole Foods.

Try criticizing Whole Foods on environmental grounds and you’ll meet a broadside of counterarguments. They support local growers, give to local food banks, teach locals how to be more healthy. Chicago needs those things. Criticize them for being hippie dippy and they’ll point to the new store’s devotion to Chicago foods: Polish sausage, Italian beef, hot dogs on poppy seed buns with flourescent green relish, mustard, onions, tomato, cucumber slices, celery salt, a pickle spear and sport peppers. But 400 parking spaces?

In a gushing and blushing preview of the store, the Chicago Tribune listed its Top 10 reasons to shop there. “Tribune needs advertisers” did not appear on the list. But coming in at both number 10 and number one: “There’s lots of parking.”

The irony was not lost on some local thugs who freely employed the local vernacular—sarcasm—in a temporary forum the Tribune includes at the end of some stories to give its readers the illusion of having a voice (the forum eventually vanishes, but the story stays forever):

From Jake: “How bitterly ironic that the yuppy Whole Foods shoppers who fancy themselves environmentally responsible for buying organic food should find this store’s most appealing feature its generous accommodation of the automobile.”

From Brian: “That’s great, an eco-conscious store that caters to drivers. Maybe the next time around, they’ll design the store so that we don’t need to get out of the auto — just widen the aisles enough to drive our SUVs through them — we’ll just reach out and grab the Panda Puffs cereal while we watch childrens’ videos from the onboard DVD player.”

From Tolvo: “Parking might be a nice feature… if they provide an outlet by each space to plug in my batteries for recharging while I shop. I notice ‘good prices’ didn’t make your list of reasons to shop at Whole Foods?”

The new store’s May 20 grand opening will feature a bike valet. And they may need it, because all the cars on wee Kingsbury Street may be going nowhere.