Fitness company, boutique grocer could be coming to former Naperville Dominick's site
Naperville development officials say they're in talks with businesses that potentially could fill one of two remaining Dominick's vacancies in the city.
The former Dominick's on Route 59 south of 95th Street in the Wheatland Marketplace shopping center is no longer under lease by Albertsons, the parent company of Jewel-Osco, Naperville Mayor Steve Chirico told a Naperville Area Chamber of Commerce audience Tuesday.
So the large store, vacated by the time all Dominick's locations in the region closed in early 2014, now is available for new tenants.
"There is now some activity," Chirico said during a quarterly gathering of commercial real estate professionals. "That lease was held by Albertsons and intentionally left vacant. Now that lease is open. So we've had some discussions with a national fitness group to go in there and also a boutique ... kind of grocer."
Christine Jeffries, president and CEO of the Naperville Development Partnership, said the most recent lease on the former Dominick's in south Naperville ended Nov. 30 and Albertsons did not renew.
"So now we have an opportunity to do something else," she said.
That's not the story, though, with the other former Dominick's in Naperville, in the Riverbrook shopping center at Raymond Drive, North Aurora Road and Ogden Avenue, Jeffries said. In the case of that store, the Albertsons lease still lasts a few more years and the company does not want another food seller to occupy the space.
"If we can find another tenant for that building that's not a grocer," Jeffries said, "we're open to it."