More than five years after plans for the site were first revealed, Whole Foods Market will open its Jacksonville Beach store at 7 a.m. Oct. 7.
The 40,000-square-foot store at 2050 S. Third St. in the Pablo Plaza shopping center will be the natural and organic specialty grocer’s second Jacksonville area location in 12 years.
Whole Foods opened its first store in the Mandarin Landing shopping center at 10601 San Jose Blvd. in 2008.
Features of the Jacksonville Beach store include a sushi and wok station, a full-service butcher and seafood counters and an in-house bakery.
Whole Foods also said the store will offer more than 800 local products from more than 150 suppliers.
Equity One Corp., then owner of the shopping center, announced plans for the store in May 2015.
Publix Super Markets Inc. leased the site at the time. Publix moved its supermarket out of that space in 1995 when it opened a new store in the South Beach Parkway center south of Butler Boulevard along Florida A1A.
Publix sublet the Pablo Plaza space to Office Depot. Renovations for Whole Foods could not begin until Publix’s lease expired in November 2018.
Jacksonville-based Regency Centers Corp. acquired Equity One in 2017 and continued with Equity One’s plans for an extensive remodel to the shopping center.
Office Depot relocated to another space in Pablo Plaza and its former site was demolished and rebuilt for Whole Foods.
Austin, Texas-based Whole Foods operates 487 U.S. stores, 14 in Canada and seven in the United Kingdom.
The company was acquired by Amazon.com Inc. in 1987 for $13.2 billion.