Owner of new Roosevelt Park neighborhood's Rodriguez Supermarket reinvests in his stomping grounds

Pablo Rodriguez remembers what the building at 2211 S. Division Avenue SE looked like nearly 30 years ago, before he purchased and renovated the 18,000-square-foot space and reopened it in September as his own Rodriguez Supermarket, or Rodriguez Supermercado.

He remembers because as a kid, he used to live on the adjacent Cordelia Street, and he used to shop at what used to be a Dutch market and watched as a handful of corner stores renovated and remodeled, slowly wearing down the building's infrastructure.

When he bought the building and began the remodel with Dixon Architecture and Pinnacle Construction Group, he says half of the building's foundation was not structurally sound enough to support the Rodriguez Supermarket remodel designs, so while the new half was ready for renovations, the older half was demolished and rebuilt from the ground up.

“For me it was important that we keep the character of the neighborhood and the look of an older Mexican supermercado to the extent of our signage out front,” Rodriguez says. “Ken (Dixon) did a really good job with the design, from the colors he used down to the windows and even some of the awnings, where we have the old clay roofing materials.” 

The new Rodriguez Supermarket is a full-service grocery with fresh produce, a full-time butcher and a commercial bakery that specializes in authentic Hispanic grocery - foods that Rodriguez says first and second generation Hispanics left at home; foods they miss. 

“I would say that about 70 percent of the grocery aisles are actually imported goods and imported brands from either Mexico, Central/South America or even the Caribbean,” he says. “Included in that would also be product that is a staple in most Hispanic recipes and meals that they’re preparing.” 

Rodriguez Supermarket took home the 2014 Gerald R. Helmholdt Award at the recent Neighborhood Business Awards, which brought in a total of 96 nominations for its 15 categories. 

Sponsored by the Neighborhood Business Alliance and Neighborhood Ventures, the Gerald R. Helmholdt Award spotlights new businesses that exemplify proactive renovation and reinvestment in neighborhood business districts and have the potential to spark transformational change in much-deserving communities. 

Rodriguez says Pinnacle Construction Group President Michael Garrett also took a special interest in developing the Rodriguez Supermarket. 

“We all saw it as more than just another business, we saw it as an opportunity to improve a neighborhood that drastically needed investment, so the job that Pinnacle Construction did was just incredible,” he says. “They paid a lot of attention to detail - every detail was important to them.”

Now that he has his own neighborhood grocery store, he wants to raise the standards - the standards of customer service, the standards of appearance, and the standards of the selection offered - because he doesn’t see investment as a risk. He knows his community and he knows they will rise to the occasion if it means supporting something better, but they can only do that if something better is made available to them. 

“When I decided to design the store a lot of people questioned why we went above and beyond so much, and my answer was that I think this neighborhood will support it and they deserve to have this caliber of a store built in their neighborhood,” he says. “ We’ve seen growth in sales absolutely every single week since the first week we opened, and we don’t expect that to end anytime soon.” 

Written by Anya Zentmeyer, Development News Editor 
Images courtesy of Pablo Rodriguez