Building a grocery store at Madison Street and Oak Park Avenue has been in the works for the better part of a decade. For the past several years that effort focused on building a second Oak Park location for Pete’s Fresh Market. Now, after many delays, Pete’s says an opening day is about six months away.
The grocery store planned for the site at 640-728 Madison St. has been in development since 2018, three years after the chain store’s first location opened in Oak Park. After years of construction delays and permit extensions attributed to the Covid pandemic, supply chain issues, the loss of the site’s original architect and other factors.
Project manager Eugene Grzynkowicz said that construction is moving at a pace that will allow the grocery store to open in either December or January.
“You all have seen the progress, a lot of vertical steel standing now and masonry, we completed our north wall, I don’t want to get contentious with our neighbors but we are just about at the end,” Grzynkowicz said at a village board meeting earlier this month. “We are on our next phase, which will be topping off with the top of the roof and we will be proceeding with the exterior masonry on Madison Street. Our parking lot is complete, as you see to the west. We have artwork up, which is looking nice. Once it is done it will close it up and decorate that corner. That is where we stand. We are on schedule and happy to open up as soon as possible.”
The grocery store chain’s other location in the village is located at 259 Lake St.
