In the end, after the shelves and display cases were dismantled and taken away in trucks, after the shopping carts, slicers, mixers, grinders and cooler boxes were moved out, there, in a corner of a debris cluttered backroom of the vacant space on Orchard Drive a large red and blue sign tossed askew.
It read “Jet Foods Now Open”
The poster never should have been there. It was from another Jet Foods store, the one that opened last year in Carol Stream and closed six months later.
Another sign could be seen in the front window of the vacant site on Orchard Drive.
“Coming Soon” and “Your Neighborhood Fresh Market.”
The posters were the height of irony. Nothing was “now open.” Nothing was “coming soon.”
Over the weekend, heaps of trash in the barren 35,000-square-foot building was all that remained of a failed three-year plan to bring a full-service grocery store to Park Forest.
In late February an Iowa firm, Backes Commercial Auctioneers, announced on Facebook that all furnishings of the Park Forest location, as well as unopened Jet Food stores in Harvey and Rockford, would be on the block, claiming the site “is a complete excellent facility that was under construction but never opened.”
Unassembled cases, five slicers, mixer/grinders, automated packaging systems, compressor rack systems, (and on and on) were ready for sale to the highest bidder. The announcement included 176 photos of stuff on which buyers could bid.
This was the way a store closes, not with a bang but an auction.
These were not penny-ante offers. According to Rod Backes, a member of the firm, the glass case market was like buying a car these days and that what once sold at $15 a square foot was now going for as much as $80. He said there was little if anything to buy at either Harvey or Rockford.
On three days last week, thousands of dollars changed hands to rid the Park Forest site of anything resembling a grocery. Even about a dozen hand-held, blue mini baskets with the store name were taken. Only the recently installed gray flooring remained in place, with some of the planks marred by scratches in the wake of the move.
We’ve told this sad tale before. We discussed the $2.1 million sale of the nearly 103,000-square-foot commercial area by the Matanky Realty Group to the Chicago-based Freedom Development Group and of how a free turkey giveaway held before Thanksgiving 2019 was a sign that there would soon be a store. That was just about the same time China reported the discovery of a virulent illness in the city of Wuhan after which the world stopped.
We chatted of how a larger slice of the building was once where Jewel Foods thrived, but through the years became a black hole in which “in-and-out” stores (Orchard Fresh, a branch of Country Squire and Park Forest Foods) would open with a ceremonial ribbon-cutting and quietly close soon after.
The “Jet” in Jet Foods were the initials of John Everest Thomas, who wore a wire that helped the Justice Department’s case against former political insider Antoin “Tony” Rezko, but who later was convicted of stealing $375,000
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from the village of Riverdale and spent two years in prison.The Rockford store never got off the ground because Thomas, in an interview with the Rockford Star claimed city officials reneged on a $1 million loan agreement after the newspaper published an account of his conviction.
The store in Carol Stream, which was less than two blocks from a large Jewel store, opened in March 2021 and closed in September. When village officials tried to contact Thomas who is listed as the CEO at Freedom Development Group but were told their messages were “undeliverable.”
Thomas can be found, however, in an October 2021 posting on You Tube where, in an interview claims the taxes on his “supermarket in Park Forest” amounts to $700,000. That figure is apparently for the entire area and according to village officials Jet Foods received a significant incentive on property taxes for the grocery store.
Sandra Zoellner, the Park Forest’s director of economic development, said the site is “open to anything” consistent with the village’s plan for the downtown, “and not just a grocery store.”
We always hear complaints about high property tax bills. The lack of a grocery store in any community means a portion of our food dollars go into the pocket of neighboring villages.
Jerry Shnay is a freelance columnist for the Daily Southtown.