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It’s been more than a year since developers in Sacramento started working to bring the city its first Whole Foods Market, and people are looking for an update.
Last week, Carol Purin contacted The Sacramento Bee’s service journalism team, which focuses on community-driven news, to ask: “Is the Whole Foods Market planned for J Street at 16th Street still in the works?”
Here’s what we know so far:
Is Whole Foods supermarket coming to Sacramento?
In an October 2022 letter obtained by The Bee, Downtown Sacramento Partnership urged Mayor Darrell Steinberg and the council “strongly to support a proposed development at the corner of 16th and J Streets where a Whole Foods supermarket would come.
“On behalf of the Downtown Sacramento Partnership, I write to strongly urge the city to support the city tax credit loan requested by SKK Developments to complete the mixed-use residential and retail development with Whole Foods as the anchor tenant,” the nonprofit said . desk wrote.
In the letter, Downtown Sacramento Partnership said the grocery chain would open a location at 1617 J St. in Boulevard Park, formerly home to Lucca Restaurant & Bar, with 198 residences above, The Bee reported in February 2023.
In February, Steinberg hinted in a State of Downtown speech about an “iconic” store moving to the same area.
“The downtown of our future will be a neighborhood with a healthy mix of housing and jobs,” Steinberg said. “Imagine an iconic grocery store on the corner of 16th and J. It’s happening.”
However, it hasn’t happened yet.
The Bee recently reached out to Steinberg’s team, Downtown Sacramento Partnership and the City of Sacramento’s Community Development Department to get answers about the status of the Whole Foods development near downtown.
All three entities referred The Bee’s reporter to SKK Developments, which had not responded to several requests for comment as of Tuesday afternoon.
“The mayor will not comment on the status of any particular development,” Mary Lynne Vellinga, Steinberg’s chief of staff, wrote in an email to The Bee on Monday.
She declined to provide further details on the status of Sacramento’s proposed Whole Foods site.
Vellinga shared an official statement from Steinberg shortly afterwards.
“We remain committed to the idea of a large supermarket serving the downtown and midtown areas and we are working hard to make that happen,” the mayor wrote.
This isn’t the first time a Whole Foods store has opened downtown.
In 2015, city officials approved a 41,000-square-foot Whole Foods near 21st and L streets downtown.
“This is a new iconic project for downtown,” then-Councilman Steve Hansen said at the time, calling the proposed project “catalytic.”
However, that supermarket never came to fruition.
“Don’t we Sac Urbanites live up to some kind of lofty shopping standards!” Purin, the Sacramento Bee reader, wrote in an email Tuesday, adding that she feels “overlooked again.”
The Bee reached out to Whole Foods several times for comment on proposals to build a store in Sacramento but had not received a response as of Tuesday afternoon.
Will Sacramento still get a new grocery store near Midtown?
It is unclear.
Madelyn Smith, director of communications and outreach for Downtown Sacramento Partnership, declined to comment on the city’s first Whole Foods site.
“I’m sorry, we have no updates,” she wrote in a June 7 email before telling The Bee’s reporter to contact city officials “for more information.”
A city spokeswoman confirmed something is in the works at 1617 J St.
In a June 7 email, Kelli Trapani of the city of Sacramento’s Department of Community Deployment said records show a development at that address had been approved, but no prospective tenant was listed.
Subsequent construction permits also do not specify a tenant, she added.
What is the Whole Foods Market?
Whole Foods Market, the largest supermarket chain in the United States, is known for its natural and organic products. Amazon acquired the company in 2017 for $13.7 billion.
There are more than 90 Whole Foods Market locations in California, including three in the Sacramento region.
One store is located at 1001 Galleria Blvd. in Roseville and another is located at 270 Palladio Parkway in Folsom. The third location is at 4315 Arden Way in Arden Arcade.
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