Whole Foods Market to open seventh store in Palm Beach County
Whole Foods Market will soon join the shops and restaurants of Uptown Boca, an upscale development west of the city on Glades Road just east of U.S. 441.
The new store will be the seventh Whole Foods in Palm Beach County and the second location in the Boca Raton area, about a 15-minute drive from the Whole Foods at 1400 Glades Road. It's also the second new Whole Foods coming to southern Palm Beach County — another supermarket is being built west of Boynton Beach.
A subsidiary of Amazon, Whole Foods Market is known for its local, organic and plant-based fare. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, the American supermarket chain made its way to Florida after a merger in 1997.
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Today, there are 32 Florida locations, with the 33rd under development at Uptown Boca. Its opening date and size have not yet been disclosed. Typically, locations range in size from 25,000 to 50,000 square feet, per the Whole Foods corporate website.
Once completed, the supermarket will be one of around 28 retailers and restaurants at Uptown Boca — the 38-acre mixed-use project at 20940 Uptown Ave. It will join merchants including Sephora, Bolay, SportClips Haircuts, Just Salad, Bonefish Grill, Chick-fil-A, BurgerFi, YogaSix, Buff City Soap and Tide Cleaners.
It also will provide groceries to tenants of Uptown Boca’s 456 luxury rental apartments.
Uptown Boca, which opened in 2020, was developed by Schmier Property Group, Giles Capital Group and Rosemurgy Properties in partnership with Wheelock Street Capital. Developers called it the first new retail and Class-A multifamily project to open in west Boca Raton in more than 20 years upon its launch.
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A year later, in 2021, Atlanta-based multifamily real estate investor Cortland bought the Residences at Uptown Boca for $230 million. It was South Florida’s largest multifamily residential deal that year.
The Uptown Boca project offers 180,000 square feet of shopping and dining options. Currently, camping retailer REI Co-op holds the largest space at the development, taking up 20,005 square feet. Whole Foods will be four doors down and even larger.
The supermarket chain also signed a lease at Boynton Beach Marketplace in March 2022. Construction on the new store is set to start this fall.
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Initially, the space Whole Foods will take up at Uptown Boca was built for an Amazon Fresh grocery store. Amazon Fresh, too, is a subsidiary of Amazon. It is a grocery retailer with physical stores and delivery services across the country.
Amazon Fresh opened its first grocery store in the United States in 2021 and has since followed with a few others. But in late 2022, many of the future Amazon Fresh grocery stores had indefinitely paused, leaving the future of the supermarket chain up in the air.
Jasmine Fernández is a journalist covering Delray Beach and Boca Raton at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at jfernandez@pbpost.com and follow her on Twitter at @jasminefernandz. Help support our work. Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Whole Foods Market in Uptown Boca west of Boca Raton Palm Beach County
