Editor’s note: A sign advertising the coming of a new Fresh Market store was incorrectly placed at the North Aurora Road location of a former Dominick’s store. A new tenant has not been announced for that grocery store. Click here for the updated story.
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Word that the old Dominick’s store on North Aurora Road will finally be occupied by a new grocery tenant comes as a welcome relief. No, not just for the city tax base, and not only to diminish suburban blight, but also as an aid to Naperville children’s geography.
The closing of our city’s three remaining Dominick’s locations in December 2013 added to Naperville’s growing inventory of vacant commercial properties. Over time, that’s bad for both city coffers and outdoor aesthetics, not to mention the loss of a Chicagoland institution in shopping. From the time I first moved to Naperville in 1999, that Dominick’s location on North Aurora – then relatively new at just 3 years old – was my go-to grocery.
Complete with its own Starbucks, still a somewhat novel idea at the time, Dominick’s offered what could reasonably be considered a contemporary shopping experience … 17 years ago.
Not yet married with children or a mortgage, I never thought twice about dropping $5 on a coffee while filling my cart with $100-plus worth of groceries. In fact, I looked forward to it. Shopping at the store was an experience, a claim that later belonged more to the likes of Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods. When Dominick’s failed to evolve to compete, it lost that feeling.
This summer, as the European-style Fresh Market moves into that vacant Riverbrook Shopping Center location, it will return an anchor tenant to a largely vacant strip mall complex that’s badly in need of one, while also introducing another more contemporary grocery option into the local mix. As such, Fresh Market joins Mariano’s, currently redeveloping another former Dominick’s location at 75th Street and Naper Boulevard, and Standard Market on Aurora Avenue, once home to Frank’s Nursery & Crafts.
That’s how we describe the location of stores and businesses, by their street name, what they’re next to or by what once occupied that locale. It’s how we remember the areas in which we live and grow up. But over time, shuttered businesses fade from memory, or were never known to some people at all. Worse, at some point, they’re just empty buildings.
Tell a 12-year-old that the old Dominick’s on North Aurora Road is going to become a new grocery store known as Fresh Market, and he or she will almost certainly remember Dominick’s. Tell that same 12-year-old that Standard Market is where Frank’s Nursery used to be, and you’ll be met with a quizzical look as if to ask “who is this baby Frank you speak of?” Frank’s Nursery closed its Illinois stores in 2004, including that Aurora Avenue location, which later housed an antiques store before being razed to make way for Standard Market in 2014.
Or, take the old Menards store at Jefferson Street and Ogden Avenue – no, seriously, somebody take it, please! Vacant since Menards moved to its new, expansive digs on Aurora Avenue and Fort Hill in 2002, “the old Menards building” has become the subject of much city and resident ridicule through the years as it’s sat unoccupied and undeveloped. But to some others, that prime corner acreage that calls out for a car dealership, retail tenant or sports complex is just “the old Kmart building.”
The “old Kmart Building?” Isn’t that the big empty vacant building farther east on Ogden, near that other old Dominick’s that’s now H-Mart?
What, there used to be a Dominick’s there, too?
Then there’s the old Famous Dave’s barbecue restaurant across Ogden, which later became the controversial Show-Me’s and then a short-lived sports bar that quickly folded, leaving that property now vacant as well.
And on, and on and on. So many places you look in Naperville – high profile locales at major intersections and along heavily traveled corridors – now sit idle, as they have for years in some cases. But city leaders are clearly now in a mode to reverse that trend.
“I question whether you’re really making an effort to market that property,” Councilman Kevin Gallaher told the owner of the long-shuttered Menards/Kmart at Ogden and Jefferson late last year before suggesting that the building be torn down.
“It’s the single biggest eyesore in the city of Naperville, and it’s right down the street from me.”
But it’s not as simple as merely occupying or redeveloping the properties. What will new businesses there add to the mix of commerce around them? Will new tenants and developments enhance the performance of nearby businesses, or detract? What will they bring to the city tax base? And, not least importantly, what will they add to the experience of living and growing up in Naperville?
“There seems to be a different kind of store these days (other) than the large Dominick’s we had before, and we’re happy to have the opportunity to fill these spaces,” Ray Kinney, chairman of the Naperville Development Partnership told the Naperville Sun when speaking of the forthcoming new Fresh Market. “The store at the Riverbrook area is an anchor tenant and people are excited to have a grocery store coming in there.”
Indeed.
I remember exactly when Menards moved from Ogden and Jefferson to its current location. It was September 2002, four months after we moved into our house nearby. I was excited to have a hardware store almost literally right around the corner. And though I was disappointed to lose that convenience so quickly, that sense of loss was tempered by the wider selection and better shopping experience offered by the new location. Little did I know that 131/2 years later, the old Menards building would still be sitting empty.
Even more sadly, our children have never known anything different.
Rob Manker is a freelance writer who lives, works, parents in Naperville.
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