WICHITA — It’s still not certain that Dillons is adding a fueling center at its store at 21st and Amidon.
Last month, Have You Heard? reported when the company knocked down the former Twin Lakes Liquor building.
Dillons employees were telling customers a gas station was coming, but company spokeswoman Sheila Lowrie wasn’t available for comment.
Now she is, but she still can’t confirm what’s happening. As soon as she can, she says, we’ll be the first ones she tells.
WICHITA — Officially, Dillons is mum about whether it’s putting a fueling center at its store at 21st and Amidon.
Unofficially, employees are telling customers it’s coming.
The former Twin Lakes Liquor store, which was on the corner in front of the store, was demolished this week.
About this time last year, after the liquor store had been closed for a while, shoppers started wondering if a gas station might be coming.
At the time, Dillons spokeswoman Sheila Lowrie said, “I can tell you that we’re always exploring options when it comes to how we can expand fuel for our customers because it’s something they tell us they enjoy about shopping with us, but unfortunately at this time I would be unable to confirm future plans for that location.”
Lowrie is out this week, and a Dillons representative says no one else is authorized to speak on behalf of the company.
No one else may be authorized, but that’s not stopping employees at the store from freely discussing it with customers.
We’ll check with Lowrie to officially confirm next week.
WICHITA — There’s a new Dillons Fuel Center under construction just west of the chain’s grocery store along Kellogg in Andover.
There will be six fuel pumps with diesel and gasoline that can accommodate 12 vehicles.
“We’ll also have a small kiosk, which is the typical format for our Dillons Fuel Centers,” says spokeswoman Sheila Lowrie.
Unless there are delays related to weather, Lowrie says the gas station should open by the end of the year.
UPDATED — An alert reader who saw a construction sign go up and then come down wonders if the Kwik Shop is still going to happen at 13th and Woodlawn near the Dillons.
It is, according to Clay Brasher, director of real estate.
“It’s probably a couple of months away from actually starting construction,” he says.
The store will be about 4,000 square feet. There will be eight fuel pumps, which equates to 16 fueling stations.
Brasher says there won’t be a pharmacy but there will be some grocery items.
“It’ll have a pretty good selection of Dillons food at Dillons prices.”
UPDATED — A new phase of the Waterfront development will be the home of Whole Foods Market when it arrives in Wichita next year.
“It’s very big for us,” said Stephen Clark II, who is managing the project, of landing the organic and natural food chain.
“It could be beneficial for the whole market,” Clark said. He said retailers such as Whole Foods Market and the new Cabela’s that entered the market earlier this year attract other big names.
“The more of that you can get, the more interest there is from others.”
Clark’s father, Steve Clark, and fellow Waterfront developer Johnny Stevens are building a new 70,000-square-foot retail center called Waterfront Plaza on the northwest corner of 13th and Webb Road, which Stephen Clark says is part of the larger Waterfront development on the northeast corner.
Whole Foods will anchor the development with a 30,000-square-foot store that Clark said will open in November 2013.
“We just feel that it’s really going to pair well with the community,” said Ben Friedland, executive marketing coordinator of the Rocky Mountain region for Whole Foods Market.
“One of the things that we’re most excited about is we’re a very decentralized organization, which allows us to build stores that are very specific to the communities in which they live,” he said. He said the chain partners with local producers who meet Whole Foods Market standards to sell their items so the store is “going to be endemic to the community, and it’s going to take on its local flair and its local flavor.”
“We’re just really excited about the abundance of local products available.”
Friedland said the Austin-based chain, which has 325 stores in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, has been looking at Wichita for a couple of years.
“It’s another feather in the cap of Wichita for bringing the big names that wouldn’t touch us two to five years ago,” said Don Piros of Landmark Commercial Real Estate. “It’s the domino effect. You bring one or two here, and the rest think, geez, maybe we should be here.”
Piros is handling leasing at the remaining 40,000 square feet at Waterfront Plaza in addition to retail and office leasing within the larger Waterfront area east of Webb Road. That includes a new 4.3 acre area under development north of Chester’s Chophouse & Wine Bar where two new office buildings are slated to be under construction soon.
Piros said he’s close on a few potential Waterfront Plaza tenants. Clark said landing Whole Foods helps.
“People want to be next to Whole Foods, and we expect a lot more activity out there.”
“Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes.”
– Charolett Knapic on whether she’s still planning her Beautiful Day Market & Cafe downtown (her first choice of a location didn’t work out, so she’s on the hunt for space again)
WICHITA — Construction on the new Fresh Market grocery coming to Bradley Fair is “well under way,” says Cathy Erickson, vice president of Laham Development.
There’s still no opening date, but Erickson says it will be this summer.
The North Carolina-based chain is going in part of the former Ultimate Electronics space.
Erickson says Wichitans don’t know what to expect with the upscale grocery.
“It’s like this big present that is coming, and they get to open it and enjoy it, and they really don’t have any idea how great it is.”
WICHITA — A new Kwik Shop is going to open next to the Dillons at 13th and Woodlawn.
No one with Kwik Shop, a sister company to Dillons, returned calls for comment. But the owner of Mariam’s Quick Mart, who was forced out because of Kwik Shop’s purchase of the land, confirms it.
“It’s no big deal,” Mo Siddique says of having to leave. “It was just too much work for me.”
He also has a Mariam’s at Central and Webb.
“I’m actually glad,” Siddique says of having less work.
His store closed in December.
Siddique says Kwik Shop was supposed to start demolition this month, but that’s been put off for at least a month or so while environmental studies are done.
UPDATED — Bradley Fair developer George Laham now confirms what Have You Heard? reported last month:
The Fresh Market grocery chain is coming to the former Ultimate Electronics space in 2012.
“The shopping center is just a perfect fit for our concept,” says Drewry Sackett, Fresh Market’s manager of public relations and community relations.
Laham, president of Laham Development, began looking for a specialty grocery store to bring to Wichita even before Ultimate Electronics closed.
In recent years, Wichitans have been hoping for a Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s.
“After looking at the Fresh Market, this was the clear choice,” Laham says.
“The only reason they’re not saying, ‘We want Fresh Market,’ is because they don’t know it,” says Cathy Erickson, vice president at Laham Development.
The Greensboro, N.C.-based chain has about 110 stores either open or opening soon, and this one will be the farthest west.
Sackett calls Wichita “a really solid Midwestern market that supports our growth into that region of the country.”
The chain is heavily concentrated in the southeast, which Laham says is why most Wichitans aren’t familiar with it.
Laham says as he began looking for a specialty grocery store, he looked throughout the industry before choosing Fresh Market.
“They are clearly a market leader,” he says.
Sackett says, “Our stores are a little bit different, certainly, than a traditional grocery store.”
She says the store is a warmer, more intimate atmosphere with classical music playing, freshly brewed coffee awaiting customers and floral arrangements greeting them at the door.
“You can see across the entire store, and that really sort of lends to that feeling of a more intimate setting,” Sackett says.
“It’s very much a European market,” Laham says. “It’s like being in Italy at an open-air market.”
The 22,000-square-foot space will be fairly compact to navigate.
“That’s kind of the beauty of it,” Erickson says.
WICHITA — Wichitans have long wanted a Whole Foods or a Trader Joe’s, but the city instead is likely getting a grocery store many people didn’t even know to wish for.
No one with Fresh Market is commenting yet, but it looks like the Greensboro, N.C.-based grocery chain will be opening in the former Ultimate Electronics space at Bradley Fair next year.
Ray and Beverly Berry started the company, which is now publicly traded, in Greensboro in 1982. According to Fresh Market’s website, the store was “the fulfillment of a dream” to recreate the feeling of European open-air markets.
“The small store with loose produce, vitamins, bulk foods and freshly roasted coffee in bins stood in stark contrast to conventional grocery stores at the time where foods had increasingly become industrialized and the stores bigger and sterile,” the site says.
Today, the chain has about 120 stores open or in the process of opening. The heaviest concentration of stores is in the southeast. The closest to Wichita looks to be the Fresh Market in Little Rock. Wichita’s store appears to be the farthest west the chain will have come yet.
These days, customers can sip coffee samples and listen to classical music as they peruse Fresh Market, which is substantially smaller than the average grocery store yet still seems to have a large collection of groceries from which to choose.
There’s an always-on-call meat department that’s reminiscent of an old-style butcher shop, which features sometimes hard-to-find cuts of meat. There’s a seafood department that receives up to six shipments a week.
Bulk food items include dried fruit, granola, more than 40 snack mixes and as many as 30 types of nuts.