Threatened with the loss of their grocery store, Lawrenceville residents gathered outside the Plummer Street Giant Eagle yesterday to lament its imminent closing.

An independently owned store since 2003, the Giant Eagle has served the neighborhood for 21 years. It is expected to close Aug. 2, one month ahead of the end of its five-year lease with the Nossokoff Family Limited Partnership. The Giant Eagle Corp. made the announcement Tuesday.

Bill Bricker, the owner, could not be reached yesterday, but on Tuesday he said the decision to close was "difficult, but necessary for financial reasons."

Two weeks ago, he bought the North Side's Cedar Avenue store from the Giant Eagle Corp., which had it for a year after the retirement of a previous independent owner.

Yesterday, Pat Hammill rolled her wheelchair toward a cluster of shoppers in front of the store, shaking her head. "What do you think about this?" she said.

"That's what we've been talking about," said Dolores Hyzy. "What are all these elderly people going to do?"

The closest alternative is a Shop 'n Save a mile east. It is built on a steep slope off Butler Street. "Going up that hill kills my batteries," said Ms. Hammill. "I guess they assume everyone drives."

"Devastating," said Kerry Hughes, who walks from Bloomfield to shop at the Giant Eagle, mainly for its $4 prescriptions.

The residents said they have heard rumors UPMC wants the property and say they believe it, but Paul Wood, a spokesman for UPMC, said the medical center is not interested in buying the property.

Tony Ceoffe, executive director of Lawrenceville United, a nonprofit advocacy group, said more than 15 people called his office outraged about the closing. He has been "asking everybody" to intervene to get Giant Eagle to keep the store, including state Sen. Jim Ferlo and the Urban Redevelopment Authority.

"This is a huge disservice," he said. "We hope to get a conversation with corporate, to ask them to do a marketing study and provide us a store worthy of an emerging community. We have a lot of low-income and underserved people and a lot of elderly, and we also have a growing middle class, a huge untapped market that would pay $9 for a better lunch meat."

Giant Eagle's spokesman, Dick Roberts, said the store "was not able to operate profitably" and that Giant Eagle does not want it for that reason. But Giant Eagle did not close the store or decide on the lease agreement, he said. "It was Bill's store and his decision to close."

Mr. Bricker has owned the store since 2003. His latest five-year lease would have expired at the beginning of September. One employee, who would not give his name, said the property owner wanted a longer lease agreement than Mr. Bricker wanted.

Although he had improved the Lawrenceville store, Mr. Ceoffe said, its aesthetics and the quality of some products sent the message "that it was a less-than store." Many Lawrenceville residents eschewed it for better options, he said.

"People would be happy not to have to drive" to other neighborhoods, he said. If Giant Eagle were to replace the existing store with a Market District store -- a larger facility with speciality products and services -- he said, "people would pack the place to the rafters."