Downtown Rochester's only grocery store is going out of business, less than five years after opening to great fanfare.

The company announced last week it’d be shutting their doors due to declining sales on Sunday, but plans have since moved up. Owners say the store is running out of inventory to sell and will now shut down on Friday, March 22.

“Very surprising, very surprising," Rochester resident Jamaal Stevens said. "One of the reasons me and my girlfriend moved down here was because of Hart’s.”

Stevens lives in the apartment across the street from Hart’s Local Grocers, and was shocked to learn the news.

“It’s a great grocery store," Stevens said. "I usually go there once a week to pick up some things when I need it, so it’s going to be sad to see it go.”

The announcement surprised local leaders too, given the store received a lot of both vocal and financial support from city and state lawmakers when it opened in summer 2014.

“It’s a very sad day," Heidi Zimmer-Meyer, president of the Rochester Downtown Development Corporation, said. "We were very excited when Hart’s opened, and I think they did a lot of right things in putting the business model together, it was something we felt strongly about with the major shifts in the retail sector — it wasn’t just about buying groceries.”

She says Hart’s tried to serve a population that has exploded, and will only continue to grow as development makes way for more housing, a new restaurant and an expanded museum.

“The really unfortunate aspect of this is they couldn’t hang on for another year, year and a half, because we have so much development going on where the Inner Loop was," Zimmer-Meyer said. "And there’ll be a lot of housing and people moving in over the next two years.”

She says the struggle of any brick-and-mortar store today is competing with online giants like Amazon, or even local giants like Wegmans in this particular instance.

“Everyone is trying to find that new path — What does it look like? What will pull people into a brick-and-mortar place as opposed to sitting on your couch in your pajamas, ordering away?" Zimmer-Meyer said. "It’s all about the experience.”

That’s what she hopes the next business that comes into that space can do for the residents.

But for now, Stevens will have to get back in his car and drive to do his shopping.

“I think it was just a cool feature having a grocery store right in the heart of the city like that, so I think that’s going to be one of the main things that’s sad: seeing a business leave out of the city like that,” Stevens said.

The City of Rochester responded to the news of Hart's closing, saying in part: 

“The City worked with Hart’s and our government partners to bring the grocer to our community, and we are disappointed to hear of its closing...we remain excited about the future of downtown and the ongoing investment throughout our community.”