Shoe Carnival is leaving, CEFCU will move in.
Radio Shack will move to the other side of Sheridan Village
The end of Sheridan Village with Cohens in it will be demolished up to the Chinese restaurant…..

If you have a retail location you think would make a good site for Whole Foods Market, Inc., please review the following guidelines carefully for consideration:

* 200,000 people or more in a 20 minute drive time
* 40,000–75,000 Square Feet
* Large number of college-educated residents
* Abundant parking available for our exclusive use
* Stand alone preferred, would consider complementary
* Easy access from roadways, lighted intersection
* Excellent visibility, directly off of the street
* Must be located in a high traffic area (foot and/or vehicle)

Interesting…

The Trader Joe’s in Madison has about 5 floors of condos above it and underground parking below (which has been sweet with all of the snow we’ve received this year.) On a related note, the new Whole Foods in Madison (they’re closing the old location which was 30,000 square feet and opening a 60,000 one) is going to have a boutique hotel on the floors above which I think is pretty interesting. We’ll see how it turns out.

Their growth strategy could be looked at like Starbucks in the respect that they’re going to target the markets that already buy espresso before they pioneer in markets that involve education. That’s why they penetrated the larger cities, college towns and places with an established coffee culture first.

What about Trader Joe’s? Hmm.. although I think TJs would be do better in Peoria than Whole Foods, they haven’t been real quick to open stores and people clammer to get them to open. I remember reading a year or two ago that citizens in Rockford mailed a petition with 500 names to Trader Joe’s to get a store to open there. So far no dice.

Who do I think could be moving in? I’m guessing that it’s an experimental organic/natural foods store run by one of the major conventional grocery store chains. There have been two growth areas in grocery in the past few years – natural/organic/upscale (and as a sub category – small sized/urban stores), low price/volume (ie WalMart) and the small urban grocery (ie trader joe’s.) The guys in the middle like Krogers, Albertsons, Piggly Wiggly are hurting big time and need to do something to stop the bleeding. One way is by starting small chains that target the whole foods customer. They’re all getting into it one way or another. Schnucks just announced a small format/urban store, as has Tesco with their Fresh & Easy chain (seen as a rival to Trader Joe’s.) So who knows – it could be one of these places that is willing to push into the secondary markets that are not already penetrated by Whole Foods. Since they’re run by major supermarket chains, they probably already have a distribution center in the area as it is which makes their cost of experimenting a little easier.

My one other thought is that perhaps it could be a cost plus world market. While not a full line grocer, their selection of gourmet foods, wine/beer & international housewares/furniture would be a neat fit for Sheridan Village.

http://www.emmesco.com/68-property.htm