Over Labor Day weekend, Ellenville saw the end of one of its more reliable employers as ShopRite closed up shop after more than 30 years. And, doubly ironic for Labor Day, it may have been the fault of a company that’s spent decades at the center of global labor disputes: Walmart.

During its decades in Ellenville, ShopRite saw the demise of Grand Union, which closed its Napanoch doors in the year 2000, and eventually the demise of the entire Grand Union chain of supermarkets, which folded in 2013. A Jamesway in the same shopping center became an Ames, fell on hard times, and closed after the company went bankrupt in 2002. For years there was nothing in that shopping center except a post office and a lonely liquor store, Russky on the Hudson. Then, to the sound of much controversy, Walmart came in to fill the vacuum at Napanoch.

There was a lively debate about that, including some sober warnings that local businesses would be destroyed by the low-cost mega-store. There were concerns that the area would become another Walmart death zone. In fact, ShopRite fired off a lawsuit at Walmart, trying to stop them from coming into town. The owner of Russky on the Hudson ran a letter-writing campaign in support of Walmart, and after about 500 letters, ShopRite withdrew the lawsuit.

The area was split into two camps: those who welcomed the home of “everyday low prices,” and those who dreaded asymmetrical competition between one of the largest companies in the history of the world and a scattering of local optometrists, pharmacists, hardware stores and other retailers struggling to pay their rent.

But, as in many towns where the same debate once raged, Walmart came in a decade ago and has flourished ever since.

But despite the most pessimistic projects, ShopRite kept going. The warnings ten years ago that Walmart would doom the supermarket seemed to fizzle away – unless you were looking closely and could detect a slow-motion thinning of the crowd. Still, as this past weekend demonstrated, the supermarket business is an unforgiving one, with tiny profit margins and fierce competition. Was Walmart to blame?

Supermarkets come and go. Remember A&P? There was an A&P market on Canal Street for years back in the 1950s and ‘60s. Today it’s a center for the ARC of Ulster and Greene Counties. A&P went from ruling the supermarket business to a pair of bankruptcies and complete disappearance by November 2016.

And by the way, Grand Union survives. The Tops chain bought it and in 2021 the defunct name was revived. It has opened 12 locations in northern New York and Vermont. Ames, the other denizen of that Walmart lot, is coming back from bankruptcy, too. They’ll be opening new locations in 2026.

ShopRite isn’t exactly the little guy boxed around by big, bad Walmart – at least not to the extent of true local businesses like the still-here Peters Market in Napanoch. ShopRite, after all, is owned by the largest supermarket group in the region, New Jersey-based Wakefern. Wakefern has been expanding closer to their headquarters, with new Cherry Hill, PA and a Sussex, NJ stores, but our area has been a trouble spot for them. Last year, they announced the closure of a bundle of stores in upstate New York, including five stores in the Albany area that were sold to Price Chopper. No such deal was found for the Ellenville store.

Is it the Walmart effect? Is it Wakefern shifting their focus closer to home? It’s hard to say. ShopRite Ellenville had been grumbling for a couple years about slipping sales, although that information didn’t become public until then-mayor Jeff Kaplan mentioned it at a debate last year. What is clear is that the remaining options are difficult for the lowest-income place in Ulster County. The people of Ellenville can now drive a ways to Pine Bush, or scrabble together groceries going from store-to-store, or get lower quality goods at Walmart, and maybe, just maybe, feed the beast that took away their supermarket.

It's not an easy choice, and we’re far from the only community who have had to make it.