Marketplace to open at ex-Kmart site

Kroger plans to keep its store on Carronade Drive in Perrysburg open while the adjacent property is converted to a larger Marketplace store.
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Kroger plans to turn its Perrysburg store into its third area Marketplace store by 2016, the company said Friday.

“The store we are looking to build in Perrysburg would be 123,486 square feet, which is our standard Marketplace prototype,” said Jennifer Jarrell, a spokesman for the company’s Columbus division, which includes northwest Ohio.

Last May, the company purchased the closed Kmart store next to Kroger at 27322 Carronade Dr. in Perrysburg.

Kroger paid $3.1 million for the 94,000-square-foot vacant store. The Kmart has continued to sit empty. It most recently was a Sears Outlet store.

Ms. Jarrell said Kroger plans to begin construction on the $16 million Marketplace conversion this spring with a tentative opening date of spring 2016.

It will build the new Marketplace on the adjacent Kmart site after the former department store is demolished.

Ms. Jarrell said the current Kroger store will remain open during construction. Kroger officials said they have not decided what they will do with the store site once the Marketplace has opened.

Kroger opened its first area Marketplace, a 133,000-square-foot store, on Sterns Road in Lambertville in June, 2013. A Marketplace differs from the retailer’s standard supermarket by offering men’s, women’s, and children’s apparel, shoes, accessories, furniture for the home, fine jewelry, baby furniture, furnishings, toys, pet supplies, kitchenware, appliances, electronics, organic foods, health food, and an expanded wine section.

In January, the Cincinnati grocery chain opened a Marketplace in the Orchard Centre Shopping Plaza in Holland, closing two nearby Kroger stores to consolidate sales at the new store.

This last fall, Kroger secured an option to buy part of the Sisters of Notre Dame property at Secor and Monroe Street to construct a store to replace the Kroger just across the street.

Although Kroger has not said if the new store would be a Marketplace, the retailer acknowledged that it secured more than enough land to build a Marketplace store should it choose to do so.

Contact Jon Chavez at: jchavez@theblade.com or 419-724-6128.