Whole Foods Market has reversed plans and will not close its store in the Bishops Corner section of West Hartford.
The company has signed a multi-year lease for the Bishops Corner location, where it will remain open. Whole Foods officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Peter D’Addeo, owner of Commercial Services Realty, which controls the shopping center where Whole Foods is located, declined to comment Monday.
Whole Foods has two stores in West Hartford and said last year it would close the Bishops Corner location once a store now under construction in Avon opened. That store was originally scheduled to open this month, but the opening has been pushed to January.
The company also had plans to expand the West Hartford center store to accommodate the anticipated increase in business from the closing of Bishops Corner. The center store, in the Blue Back Square development, will not be expanded.
Whole Foods has opted to keep the Bishops Corner store open after realizing its customers would likely not travel over Talcott Mountain to the Avon store and because of the success of Amazon Prime Now, a service that has shoppers pick up groceries for online customers and deliver them within two hours. The Bishops Corner store is an especially busy Amazon Prime Now, location.
Amazon is the parent company of Whole Foods Market.
Kristen Gorski, an economic development specialist with the town of West Hartford, said she knew that D’Addeo was in talks with a tenant for the Whole Foods space but did not know who and said it is good news Whole Foods is going to stay.
“If that is the signed tenant, that’s fantastic news [and] very positive for Bishops Corner and all of West Hartford to be able to retain that really important business,” Gorski said.
People in the Bishops Corner area were disappointed when Whole Foods said it planned to close the store, she said.
The first natural and organic grocery store in West Hartford was Wild Oats, which opened in February 2000 and occupied the 27,000-square-foot Bishops Corner space that had been a Service Merchandise store.
In October 2005, Whole Foods opened its first store in West Hartford center as part of the Blue Back Square development.
In 2007 Whole Foods bought Wild Oats, its primary rival, and eventually converted the Bishops Corner store to a Whole Foods Market.
David Owens can be reached at dowens@courant.com.
