Food City Closing ‘Flea Market’ Store

Food City will close its store at 6723 Ringgold Road on April 2, officials with the giant grocery store chain said.

Food City CEO Stephen Smith told the Chattanooga Times Free Press that the store was old and there was never any long-term plans for the store except to replace it. Smith said that Food City has acquired a piece of property just over the Georgia state line on Highway 41 where a new store will be built.

The new 48,000-square-foot store will open in seven or eight months, officials said.

The land for the new Food City store was bought several weeks ago and company officials are working with Fort Oglethorpe to provide utilities to the building.

The Food City store on the east end of Ringgold Road was built in 1974. The almost 50 employees who work there will be offered other positions within the company, officials said.

Smith told the Times Free Press that the East Ridge store will be the 15th former Bi-Lo store that Food City has either closed or rebuilt since coming into the regional market about four years ago.

About Dick Cook

Dick Cook has lived in East Ridge since the Kennedy Administration when his parents bought a house on Marietta Street. Dick graduated from ERHS in 1976 before going on to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where he studied Political Science. Dick worked for the Chattanooga Free-Press and the Chattanooga Times Free Press for 22 years. Free-Press Sports Editor Roy Exum plucked him out of production in 1989 and gave him a job as a sports reporter. Dick covered everything from prep sports to the whitewater events on the Ocoee River for the 1996 Olympics. When Chattanooga's two paper's merged, he became the Crime Reporter covering both the Chattanooga Police and Fire Departments. He was among reporters who were honored by the Associated Press for the TFP's coverage of the 2002 fog-shrouded crash on I-75 in Catoosa County, Dick and his wife, Cathy, live on Marlboro Avenue where they are seen frequently chasing around their three grandsons.