Lease with city for Park Street grocery store nears completion, say parties (2024)

A lease will soon be finalized for a long-awaited grocery store on South Park Street.

“I think we're probably within a week or so, pending any legal jargon, of having a lease signed,” Kristie Maurer, the grocery store’s owner, said at an Aug. 19 Zoom meeting of the South Metropolitan Planning Council, a collection of south-side Madison neighborhood and business groups.

Maurer’s Urban Market was expected to open by the end of 2023 on the first floor of Park Cedar Apartments. Maurer will lease the city-owned storefront and control operations. Maurer signed on to operate the grocery in 2022, after Luna’s Groceries pulled out in 2021.

Once Maurer signs the lease, the city will close on financing and Maurer’s team can begin working on construction. Maurer said that she hopes construction would start within two months and the store would be open for business by late spring or early summer 2025.

Legal negotiations on the lease pose the last hurdle for the project, Dan Rolfs, city of Madison real estate development manager, said at the meeting. He acknowledged that the process has been challenging: “If we sat down and had a beer, you would be three sheets to the wind by the time we went through all of the issues that have come up with this project.”

Those issues include design challenges and a funding gap; in May the city council approved an additional $1 million for improvements to the grocery store space.

City officials and neighborhood residents started planning for a new Park Street grocery store eight years ago when it was anticipated that the Pick ‘n Save at 1312 Park St., one block over from Park Cedar Apartments, would close. They were concerned that the area would become a food desert, without a neighborhood store providing affordable and nutritious food.

The Pick ‘n Save, however, extended its lease in 2022, reflecting what the lot’s property owner sees as a reversal of the store’s profitability. It’s still uncertain if the store will close once Maurer’s opens, and a number of residents at the South Metropolitan Planning Council meeting asked about the potential for dueling grocery stores in the area.

A resident who identified herself as Linda B. on Zoom referenced an Isthmus story from February 2024 that quoted Kurt Welton, who owns the property the Pick ‘n Save operates from, as saying “I’m going to let Kroger decide when they want to close.” A representative from Kroger was noncommittal on a closure at the time.

“It's been a very frustrating process to see this drag on for years,” said Linda B. “I think somebody ought to have some feedback as to the intentions of the person who owns Pick ‘n Save and what they plan to do.”

Maurer said that she didn’t have any further information. “I've run several scenarios to determine, you know, how things will go if they choose to stay open, or if they close, and no one besides Pick ‘n Save knows,” she said. “Unfortunately, they're not being very transparent, so we’re not sure what that looks like.”

The city has pledged $9.1 million for the grocery store project over the last four years: $4.6 million to purchase the space in 2021, $3.5 million for tenant and grocery store improvements in 2023 and an additional $1 million in tenant improvements in May 2024. City officials hope to recover as much of the May 2024 $1 million tenant improvement costs as possible through future payments from developers Rule Enterprises and Movin’ Out, according to an April 10 letter to all alders from Rolfs. Rolfs tells Isthmus details are being finalized.

Rolfs said at the meeting that he’s hopeful the project’s long-awaited closing is near.

“So there's an awful lot of things going on, but I will say from the city side, I feel like we're in a pretty reasonable spot to — Lord willing and the creek don't rise — have this lease signed as quickly as we're able to in the next week or so,” Rolfs said. “And then move forward to get, as Kristie noted, financing, design and construction underway as quickly as we can.”

[Editor's note: This article was corrected to note that planning for a new grocery store began eight years ago, not five. In addition, details are still being worked out on potential developer payments tocover the $1 million in improvements approved by the city council in May.]