Murder Kroger

src: i.imgur.com

Murder Kroger is the name by which the Kroger supermarket at 725 Ponce de Leon Avenue in Poncey-Highland, Atlanta has been popularly known for two decades.

Since 2014, the store has been refurbished and promoted as BeltLine Kroger by the owners. The store opened in 1984 and is considered a local landmark.

The nickname refers to murders that took place in the parking lot in 1991 and 2015. In 2002, an odorous corpse was found in a vehicle in the parking lot.

On January 15, 2016, Kroger announced that the location would be demolished to make way for 725 Ponce, a mixed-use development incorporating office space, a new urban prototype Kroger store, and expanded parking.

Video Murder Kroger

History

An article in Creative Loafing called the store "one of the city's quirky charms that Atlantans seem to both love and hate at the same time". It opened shortly after 1986, when low-interest government loans were used to convert the adjacent and former Ford Motor Company Assembly Plant into lofts and commercial spaces. From the 1990s, and until at least 2002, the store had drivers license renewal services. In 2002 the store tested scan-it-yourself checkout devices. After two Publix supermarkets opened nearby, the store was refurbished around 2002. The closest neighboring Kroger, near Little Five Points, is the area's top performing one, as of 2006.

In October 1999, a man robbed the Bank of America inside the store. A song titled "Murder Kroger" by the group Attractive Eighties Women, which incorporates a mention of the nearby Clermont Lounge into the lyrics, is dedicated to shoppers who frequent the store. Renovations were scheduled for completion in November 2014 at the market, including a bike/pedestrian ramp to the Atlanta BeltLine's Eastside Trail, a bike repair station, new curbs and sidewalks (including paved sidewalk access to Ponce de Leon Avenue), new trees and landscaping, a "water quality pond" in the parking lot to filter runoff, new LED parking lot lighting and repaving the front and back parking lots.

Murders and corpse

• In 1991, a 25-year-old woman, Cynthia Prioleau, was fatally shot in the parking lot. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution attributed the nickname "Scary Kroger" to the store because of the event. The murder was unsolved as of 2015.
• In August 2002, a strong odor raised the suspicions of a woman who reported her findings to police: a dead man was in a car in the parking lot.
• In 2012, a 20-year-old male junior at Georgia State University, Lee Lowery, was murdered just inside the Ford Factory Lofts, which shares a parking lot with Murder Kroger.
• On March 10, 2015, Joshua R. Richey was fatally shot in the chest beside the Kroger building.

Maps Murder Kroger

References

src: cdn.atlantamagazine.com

External links

• Marketplace and WABE audio coverage (3 min 6 sec)
• 725 Ponce website

Source of the article : Wikipedia