Aldi Grocery Approved For New Tampa!

Aldi is officially coming to New Tampa.

The petition to re-zone the property of the former Ruby Tuesday restaurant on Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. was unanimously approved earlier today by the Tampa City Council on the second reading.

The city’s Development Review & Compliance staff had already found the petition, which requests to be reclassified from a PD-A (Planned Development, Alternative restaurant) to PD (Planned Development, retail sales, shopper’s goods), to be consistent with applicable City of Tampa land regulations.

The proposed Aldi store, which will be located at the corner of BBD and Highwoods Preserve Pkwy. in front of the AMC movie theater, will be 19,160 square feet — almost four times the size of Ruby Tuesday — with 106 parking spaces.

Leon Capital Group, the owners who purchased the 2.36-acre lot for $2.82 million in 2018, were represented at the first reading on Jan. 16 by Scott Stannard of Commercial Site Solutions.

Stannard said the plans include not only replacing the vacant restaurant, but enhancing the surrounding area.

“We feel it’s an improvement, actually,” Stannard told the council members. “We’ve had arborists go out and we’re going to be taking down some of the dead trees and replacing them with new landscaping and beefing that up. It will be a nice fit for what’s out there.”

Stannard also said as that, as part of the new development, a sidewalk will be built on Highwood Preserve Pkwy., to aid pedestrians who are shopping, as well as those using the bus stop at the same corner.

“It’s really surprising there’s not one there already,” Stannard said.

Aldi, a German discount grocer, will be the third supermarket to open along a less-than-one-mile stretch of the west side of BBD. It would join a Publix at the corner of BBD and New Tampa Blvd. and Sprouts Farmers Market, which will be open by this summer in the new Village at Hunter’s Lake development across from the entrance to the Hunter’s Green community.

While Publix is the largest of the three and Sprouts is a “green” grocer, Aldi is a hugely popular German discount chain that carries brands that many shoppers here in the U.S. may not recognize, including their own. More than 90 percent of the brands Aldi carries are exclusive brands.

One unique aspect of Aldi is the quarter charge to rent a shopping cart at the store, to prevent stray carts from being left in the parking lot where they can dent cars.

Users get their quarter back when they return the cart.

Another Aldi is just weeks away from opening on S.R. 56 in Wesley Chapel, right in front of the Costco.

Earth Fare To Close!

Well, that was fast.

In a rather stunning move, Earth Fare, Wesley Chapel’s first – and only – large green grocer, is closing all of its stores, including the Cypress Creek Town Center location on S.R. 56.

In a press release earlier today, the North Carolina-based grocer announced it was liquidating all of its stores nationwide, and liquidation sales will begin immediately. Even store fixtures can be had, the release noted.

“Earth Fare has been proud to serve the natural and organic grocery market, and the decision to begin the process of closing our stores was not entered into lightly,” the company said in the press release.  “We’d like to thank our Team Members for their commitment and dedication to serving our customers, and our vendors and suppliers for their partnership.”

The Wesley Chapel location will, perhaps, barely make it to its first anniversary. More than 100 shoppers lined up on Feb. 19, 2019 eager to be some of the store’s first customers.

“A gut punch,” says Hope Allen, the CEO of the North Tampa Bay Chamber of Commerce.

Allen said she had recently read about Earth Fare closing a store in Gainesville on Jan. 11 after only four years, but still didn’t think the Wesley Chapel store, which was the 12th for the company in Florida, was in any danger.

“It is very shocking,” Allen says. “I thought we would be immune from those closures because it was so recently opened.”

On a VIP tour of Earth Fare a week before it opened, CEO/president Frank Scorpiniti touted the quality of Earth Fare’s organic products, which do not contain high-fructose corn syrup, artificial fats, colors, sweeteners, or preservatives, or meats that were bred with antibiotics or growth hormones. The chain had a “boot list” — a long list of banned ingredients it does not allow in anything sold in any Earth Fare store.

At the time, Scorpiniti said the Wesley Chapel opening was just the beginning of an aggressive plan to expand Earth Fare’s footprint. At the time, the company was operating 50 stores, and Scorpiniti said he expected there to be more than 100 locations in a few years.

Earth Fare, which was founded in Asheville, NC, in 1975, said its financial struggles were too much to overcome, and hinted that its efforts had failed.

“While many of these initiatives improved the business, continued challenges in the retail industry impeded the company’s progress as well as its ability to refinance its debt,” the press release said. “As a result, Earth Fare is not in a financial position to continue to operate on a go forward basis. As such, we have made the difficult, but necessary decision to commence inventory liquidation sales while we continue to engage in a process to find potential suitors for our stores.”