Workers at the Fresh Grocer at 40th and Walnut were erecting a new sunscreen display near the checkout lines this morning, getting the store ready for the spring. Nothing strange about that, except that the store was supposed to close today for good to make way for a new supermarket operator.
Fresh Grocer’s property lease expires today, March 31, according to the University of Pennsylvania’s Facilities and Real Estate Services office. The office manages Penn’s vast holdings in West Philadelphia and has plans for the space that do not include Fresh Grocer.
“Penn has notified Fresh Grocer that its lease will expire on March 31 and that it must vacate the store by that date,” spokeswoman Jennifer Rizzi wrote in an e-mail on March 30. “However, Fresh Grocer rejects Penn’s position that the lease expires on that date, so we do not know whether they will vacate the store on March 31.”
“If they do not vacate by tomorrow [Friday, March 31], Penn will continue ongoing legal proceedings to enforce the lease and enable its new supermarket tenant, who will be announced shortly, to begin renovations to the market space.”
If the sunscreen display is any indication, Fresh Grocer has no plans to leave at any point in the near future. Fresh Grocer executives have argued that there is a discrepancy over whether the grocer was late in giving Penn notice of its intentions to renew its lease. The university started taking bids on new grocers and reportedly has settled on Acme Markets as the new tenant.
Fresh Grocer launched an appeal earlier this year to save the store. No one from Fresh Grocer was available to comment on the store’s short-term future. An employee at the store believes it will remain open through the end of the semester.
Despite Fresh Grocer’s appeals, Rizzi says the university will have a new grocer in the space soon.
March 31st, 2017 at 7:09 pm
What the hell is going on here? Why would Penn push out a perfectly good tenant without having the proper discussions? It seems there is more to this story than is being revealed to the public.
March 31st, 2017 at 8:48 pm
With Penn it always seems like there are ‘issues’. Nothing is ever neat and clean with them. They give with one hand and take away with the other hand. Its like they are always trying to find an edge, an angle to work; like a third child that never got any attention growing up.
March 31st, 2017 at 8:58 pm
On the other hand, I’ve often been forced to stand in obscenely long lines at FG to buy just a few items, when there were ample empty aisles the poor dears couldn’t bear to spend any more $$ to staff. So I empathize with the workers, but not the business.
April 1st, 2017 at 9:45 am
I’ve been shopping at the store for about 2 years now and it is so cramped the prices are different they are charging tax on all kinds of different things that are not supposed to be the upstairs eating area smells like pee because all the homeless people sit up there they need to clean the store out and rearrange it I can’t wait for Acme to take over
April 1st, 2017 at 11:58 am
West Philly deserves a supermarket that is reliable and reputable with customer service that is pleasant and professional.
When penn signed a lease with fresh grocer in 2000 it was the first of its kind. It was a start up. And Now there must be 20 freshgrocers. that scrappy start up has lost its focus. It is complacent. And the customer suffers. My cedar park neighborhood understands what I mean.
Retail businesses change. It’s natural in a volatile segment of the economy.
So when a new operator comes in to operate the supermarket it will be an improvement. West Philly deserves a change.
April 3rd, 2017 at 4:45 pm
West Philly has a sizeable number of families here making $200k+/yr. We deserve several unremarkably average suburban quality grocery stores, not broken belts and surly staff.
April 3rd, 2017 at 8:33 pm
hmm @Smegtastic, but those making less than $200k/yr deserve subpar nutrition and service?
April 4th, 2017 at 7:48 pm
Im sorry that the store closing this summer and didnt renew the least and couldn’t save the store right away
April 6th, 2017 at 3:25 pm
@Katie haha I just mean supermarkets are not doing us some kind of favor by opening in UC. We should enforce high standards as Penn has done.
April 6th, 2017 at 10:49 pm
I thought the $200k/yr households shopped at Mariposa, or, drove out to Wegman’s on weekends to shop. Ha!
April 7th, 2017 at 1:41 pm
Some of us $200K-ers are equal opportunity shoppers. Mariposa, Fresh Grocer at 40th or on Gray’s Ferry, Supreme Shop N’ Bag, Fresh Direct, Trader Joe’s, corner bodegas. . Wegman’s not so much. Convenience is king