Don’t expect to see Whole Foods open its new store on the old Minyard’s site before the very end of next year, if then. I’ll have more on this in my November magazine column, but it looks like a combination of factors –- the retailer’s fight with the federal government to buy rival Wild Oats, a restructuring of its Texas operations, and particularly its plan to ask the city to amend the property’s zoning –- will delay construction. (The photo is an aerial shot of the site, which is the triangular bit in the middle.)
The zoning change could be especially time consuming. A Whole Foods statement says "we are in the process of asking the City of Dallas for an amendment to the zoning on the site to allow us to build a store that does not conform to the ‘big box’ format that currently occupies the site."
Whole Foods must notify several neighborhood groups of its plans 30 days before it applies for the change, as well as nearby property owners. It has not yet filed for the zoning change, says a city zoning official, and the property owners and neighborhood groups I talked to said they haven’t heard from the chain, either. That means we’re at least 30 days away from starting the process.
Then, if the zoning request goes off without a hitch (and how often does that happen around here?), we’re at another 90 days, say city officials. That brings us to March 2008, and construction of this kind of building usually takes 9 or 10 months –which brings us to January 2009. Whole Foods, when it bought the Minyard’s in February, said it expected to open the store at the end of this year.
