Amazon plans grocery store in Naperville
The online retail giant Amazon is seeking to open a grocery store in Naperville, city documents show.
Amazon Retail, LLC, has applied for a liquor license for a grocery store with packaged alcohol sales at 3116 S. Route 59, suite 104.
The space is in the Wheatland Marketplace shopping center, where a former Dominick's store has stood vacant since all of the grocer's locations in the region closed in early 2014.
Amazon Retail has a 10-year lease starting on the opening date of a future store with property owner TDC Naperville, LLC, city documents show.
Amazon offers online shopping for grocery delivery with two-hour service in some locations through its Prime membership. The company runs "Amazon Go" shops and has made news recently for opening its first cashierless, full-size grocery store this week in Seattle.
But it was not immediately clear what model the company plans for a Naperville grocery store or when the store will open. An attorney representing Amazon Retail was not immediately available Thursday afternoon, and the store manager did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Naperville officials hinted about a year ago during a Naperville Area Chamber of Commerce meeting about potential tenants for the former Dominick's on the south side of town, with Mayor Steve Chirico saying a fitness center and a "boutique ... kind of grocer" could be coming to fill the spot.
Chirico said Thursday Amazon has not applied for any variances to the typical Class D "Package Store" liquor license, which he said indicates the company is not planning an automated or cashierless model.
"That would require a special variance to our system," Chirico said. "They're not requesting that."
The Wheatland Marketplace site is one of three former Dominick's stores in Naperville. Another, anchoring the Fox Run Square shopping center on Naper Boulevard just north of 75th Street, became a Mariano's that opened in May 2016. The third, at Riverbrook Plaza at Raymond Drive, Aurora Avenue and North Aurora Road, remains vacant.
Albertson's, the parent company of the Jewel-Osco grocery chain, initially held leases on two of the former Dominick's sites, but its lease on the spot now in line to become an Amazon grocery store expired in November 2018, city officials said last year.
"We're certainly really pleased that they've selected Naperville as a location," Chirico said. "The people on the south side of Naperville will be thrilled to have that space filled up."