Eagle Mountain Grocery Store

While bleak economic data seems to come in droves these days, Eagle Mountain is celebrating some fiscal happiness.
The city has approved its first major grocery store, long awaited by both residents and city officials. And store owners say they will build, despite the rogue national economy.

“How soon can we start building?” asked Councilman Nathan Ochsenhirt after the council approved the building.

“We hope this spring,” said Phillip Cooper, who is the store’s namesake and president of CWC Inc., a new independent grocery store operator in Utah. The store will be called Coop’s Market and will be the first of that moniker, Steve Miner, president of Market Development Inc. — the real estate arm of Associated Foods — has said.

For the past two or more months, the City Council has been scheduling “status updates” on Coop’s Market and then canceling those updates, raising the specter that plans for the grocery store might not move forward. Those concerns were put to rest recently when the city not only approved the rezone of more than 20 acres for the store, but approved the site plan and plat for the store, too.

Council members lauded progress on the store.

“We had a good night,” said Councilman David Lifferth. “We made progress toward a grocery store. I know that for several years I have been told I would be able to buy my Thanksgiving turkey at the new grocery store, and I hope next year I will be able to.”

The store has been in the works for more than a year. It will be 47,000 square feet, with an additional 40,000 square feet of adjacent store space, said Steve Mumford, Eagle Mountain’s planning director. Store officials said that compares to the 60,000-square-foot Albertsons in Lehi, or a typical 220,000-square-foot Wal-Mart. The new store will be about the same size as the Kohler’s grocery store in Highland.

The $9 million store will operate as part of Associated Foods and will be located on the north side of State Road 73 at Ranches Parkway. Store officials have called the grocery store a superstore, saying it will include a bakery, deli, butcher’s counter, indoor pharmacy, drive-up pharmacy and organics. The store is expected to employ 125 full-time and part-time workers, and could add hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to city coffers, according to city officials.

Space for smaller stores around the grocery store could include financial services, sit-down and fast-food restaurants, dry cleaners and similar businesses, Miner has said.

Story Source: Caleb Warnock - DAILY HERALD

Tags: Grocery Store