Whole Foods Market is coming to Trolley Square

SALT LAKE CITY — After stalled negotiations and even a $50 million lawsuit, Whole Foods Market nonetheless will be part of Trolley Square.

On Wednesday, Trolley Square announced that construction is under way for a 62,000-square-foot building in the east side of the Trolley parking lot, and all but 20,000 square feet will be occupied by the grocer, based in Austin, Texas. The remaining space will be shops for Trolley to lease.

The footings are being poured, said Dawn Katter, who does marketing for Houston-based Transwestern, which manages Trolley.

"We're going to start putting walls up in about three weeks," Katter said. "We'll be turning the building over to Whole Foods in June" for interior construction.

The grocery store is expected to open in January 2011.

But the Whole Foods building at Trolley wasn't always a sure thing. Last June, Trolley Square filed a $50 million suit against Whole Foods, alleging it had backed off its intentions to lease a 60,000-square-foot store after acquiring Wild Oats and announcing a strategy of running smaller stores. One of the acquired Wild Oats stores is on 400 South, just two blocks from Trolley Square.

The lawsuit has been settled and specifics are private, said Tom Bard of Scanlankemperbard Cos., a company based in Portland, Ore., that owns the mall.

"We're glad they're going to be part of Trolley Square and we know they'll have a positive impact," Bard said. "Their customers, we believe, are our customers."

Spokesmen for Whole Foods didn't return calls to the Deseret News on Wednesday.

The rest of Trolley's remodeling project will be finished by June, including three buildings over the newly reconstructed west-side parking garage and two levels of parking above the Whole Foods building, Katter said.

That would make the Trolley Square project the first to be completed among the Salt Lake Valley mall reconstruction projects. City Creek's retail won't open until 2012. Work on Cottonwood Mall — which was demolished and supposed to become a "European village" of office, retail and housing — hasn't begun. At Fashion Place Mall, a newly constructed Nordstrom opened last year. The former Nordstrom space is supposed to be remodeled and become a new wing of retail.

The newest wing under construction at Valley Fair Mall will be finished in the fall.

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