As snow fell around her Monday, Melissa Orr set off on the five-block walk from her home on Madison's Allied Drive to the Cub Foods store where she shops two or three times a week.

She does not own a car, so the store, 4716 Verona Road, is her only option for grocery shopping unless she takes a bus. At the store, Orr learned it will close by mid March, leaving her and many other residents of one of the city's poorest neighborhoods without a supermarket within walking distance.

"If nothing else replaces it, it's going to be a big hassle for so many people," said Orr, 30, a custodian.

Cub Foods, based in Stillwater, Minn., cited "a difficult economic environment" in announcing the closing of the store, which opened just eight years ago in a newly constructed building. The news came a few days after the chain's parent company, Supervalu Inc., said it would close about 50 underperforming stores in the country this year.

Cub Foods spokeswoman Lee Ann Jorgenson said the company would have no further comment. She declined to say how many people the store employs. When it opened, it had about 200 full- and part-time workers.

Cub Foods also said Monday it will close both of its Green Bay stores and its store in Beloit. Two other Madison stores, at 4141 Nakoosa Trail and 7455 Mineral Point Road, will remain open.

As the news spread in the Allied Drive neighborhood, residents and others expressed shock and concern. The fragile area has a history of high crime, but a publicly backed revitalization project underway has boosted hopes.

Rachel Strauch-Nelson, a spokeswoman for Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, said the mayor spoke with a Cub Foods executive Monday afternoon and sought unsuccessfully to convince the company to reconsider its decision.

"He explained the Allied Drive situation and the progress in the neighborhood and told him this would be seen as a step backward for the neighborhood," Strauch-Nelson said.

The company is committed to working with the city to try to find a new grocery store tenant, Strauch-Nelson said. She is not aware of any interest at this point.

David Livingston, a grocery expert who owns DJL Research in Waukesha, said the location has not been kind to grocery stores. A Kohl's food store at the same location failed, as did a SuperSaver Sentry across Verona Road.

But basically, the Cub Foods store was outperformed by rivals such as Woodman's, Copps and Sentry, Livingston said. "(Cub Foods) was not able to deliver a message of quality, service or price," he said.

That sentiment surfaced Monday even among residents who bemoaned news of the store's closing.

"Their prices are so high, and this is a lower-income neighborhood," said Marcus Taylor, 25. He has a car and typically drives to Woodman's. Still, "this will cause a huge problem for people here," he said.

Larry Armstrong, 44, another Allied Drive resident, said he does most of his shopping at Cub Foods because of the convenience. "When they do have sales, their prices are good," he said.

Ryan Estrella, a Dane County social worker based on Allied Drive, said numerous residents lack vehicles and that the store's closing will be a hardship. Many neighborhood families are headed by single parents, so taking a bus is a major undertaking when children and bags of groceries are figured in. In the future when people need only a few staples such as milk and baby formula, they will probably end up at a gas station, where costs add up quickly, he said.

"I think this will be devastating to the neighborhood," Estrella said.

The county just bought $2,000 worth of food certificates for the Verona Road Cub Foods that will be distributed to hungry Allied Drive families, especially pregnant women, said Ron Chance, the county's community programs manager.

The store closing also will have repercussions for the Allied Drive food pantry, run by volunteers from area churches. Customers at the Verona Road Cub Foods store can buy $5 sacks of groceries for the food pantry on their way through the checkout lane, which makes a donation easy. The partnership with Cub Foods nets the food pantry about 100 bags of groceries a month, said Mike Bodden, food pantry manager.

"That's going to be a terrible loss of food for us," he said.