A Trader Joe's in Stoughton?

With Shaw's announcing it will be closing six of its underperforming supermarkets - including the Stoughton location - by August 3, Shaw's Plaza on Washington Street will lose its anchor store, and a 35,000 square foot retail space will be vacant.

Billed as "your neighborhood grocery store," a group of Stoughton residents are petitioning that Trader Joe's open up in the downtown neighborhood, filling this soon-to-be vacant Shaw's location.

Stoughton resident Adam Dawkins created a "Bring Trader Joe's to Stoughton" Facebook page on Monday, and the group already has more than 300 members (as of Thursday at 5 p.m.), and keeps growing.

"This is a group to drive support and requests to bring Trader Joe's to Stoughton, MA. With the recent [announced] closing of Shaw's near our town center, this is a great opportunity to bring an affordable, high-quality specialty store to our town, which will drive traffic and [be] an economic boost," Dawkins wrote on the group's Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/groups/147157292149062/).

The closest Trader Joe's to Stoughton is their Foxborough location, which opened this past September at Patriots Place. This location took a 16,000 square feet space formerly occupied by Circuit City, Foxborough Patch reported. The Stoughton Shaw's is more than twice that size.

There is also a Trader Joe's in Hanover, Needham, and one coming soon to Hingham, according to the company's website, but none in the immediate Stoughton area.

Dawkins refers members of the Facebook group to a page on the Trader Joe's website where you can request Trader Joe's locations (http://www.traderjoes.com/about/location-requests-form.asp).

Would you like to see a Trader Joe's in Stoughton? Or perhaps a Market Basket or Whole Foods (as others have suggested on various comment boards)? Tell us what you would like to see take the place of the soon-to-be vacant Shaw's supermarket in Stoughton.