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Residents Petition for Whole Foods Market

Posted on: Tuesday, 27 September 2005, 18:00 CDT

By Christopher Calnan, The Florida Times-Union, Jacksonville

Sep. 28--A group of San Marco residents plans to petition upscale organic grocer Whole Foods Market to open a store in their neighborhood.

But the Austin, Texas-based company said Tuesday such lobbying will have little effect on the selection of a Jacksonville site because Whole Foods has been visiting the city to scout for prospective locations for the last six years anyway.

Regional president Juan Nunez said he toured the city as recently as last week. The petition confirms that there's a demand in the area, but the company is still looking for locations that would meet its criteria.

"We believe our customer base is there, but we have to find the right site to help us deliver the right experience for Whole Foods customers," he said. "There's a possibility of multiple stores in Jacksonville."

Nunez declined to specify what parts of Jacksonville are being considered for stores. When asked if San Marco was in the running, he called the area "interesting to us."

"It seems like there are more possibilities there," he said.

Jacksonville lawyers and colleagues at Baptist Health Lanier Drew and Scott Baity started the Whole Foods campaign last year when Drew approached local developer Jay Southerland about attracting an upscale supermarket to San Marco.

"I just thought, 'this community is ready for it,' " Drew said. "I thought, 'there are plenty of people around who would spend a little more money for an upscale grocery store.' "

Southerland's business partner, Michael Balanky, president of Chase Properties, has been trying to attract a supermarket to the area for several years. So Southerland referred Drew and Baity to Balanky.

He's developing a retail-office project -- including a 50,000-square-foot space for a grocery store -- in San Marco called Kings Avenue Station that's scheduled to break ground in February.

Balanky said Whole Foods would be a sure hit in San Marco, not just because of the number of people who already live in the historic area, but also because of the area's coming growth spurt. Some 3,000 condominiums are scheduled to be built in the next five years, including his own 21-story project called San Marco Place. Also, the area is also part of the central business district, which Balanky, who has served on the chamber of commerce and the local urban land institute, said contains the highest concentration of well-educated, upper-income workers in the city.

"All of them would be shopping there on the way home [from work]" he said. "There's no market in Jacksonville that even comes close to it."

In August, Baity posted a petition on the Web site www.wholefoodsjax.com. The site has gotten 589 signatures as of Tuesday afternoon, he said.

Whole Foods, which reported sales of $3.9 billion last year, operates stores in 30 states. In Florida, it operates seven stores, mostly in South Florida. It plans to open its eighth Florida store in West Palm Beach next month and has four other stores in development, Nunez said.

Nationally, the company operates 176 stores but expects to increase that number to 300 by 2010, spokeswoman Ashley Hawkins said.

Consultant Burt Flickinger, managing director of Connecticut-based Reach Marketing, has said Whole Foods is one of the best-run retailers in the United States. He predicts the company will open stores in Northeast Florida by late 2006 or mid-2007.

Whole Foods, which started in New Orleans in 1980, has a history of acquiring local natural grocers when it moves into an area. But that's unlikely to happen in Jacksonville, Nunez said. Whole Foods doesn't acquire stores anymore because its formats have grown larger. "All our stores are original creations," he said. "We build our own."

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WFMI,

Source: The Florida Times-Union

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