Natural Foods Warehouse to Open at Silos in Crabapple | Crabapple Mercantile Exchange Forges Forward
categories: Announcements, Commercial Activity, Crabapple
CRABAPPLE - Finally, news has escaped out about who will occupy the old Ingles space in Crabapple at The Silos. The AJC reported this week that Natural Foods Warehouse signed a letter of intent to lease 20,000 square feet and open shop by the end of the year.
As a person who eats as healthily as I can, I’m down with a natural foods alternative in Crabapple. I would only hope that I could get a quick, healthy lunch there, but probably not.
Other commercial / retail news in Crabapple includes the continued construction of The Crabapple Mercantile Exchange along Crabapple Road in "downtown" Crabapple. I know a lot of people can’t believe that construction is ongoing with the current real estate market and the amount of existing empty retain space.
However, Crabapple Mercantile can boast some pre-leases as Scoops (Ice Cream Shop), Zest (Restaurant) and The Founders Cigar Club.
I don’t know the scoop on Zest yet; but then I don’t know the zest on Scoop, either. I just know that my wife has been claiming for years that Crabapple needs a good ice cream store. Little does Scoops know that if they have good chocolate - or even Gelato - what a good customer my wife will be. I think she has a separate account just for ice cream money.
I’m not a smoker and my idea of a cigar was a sneaked puff on a Swisher Sweet sometime during adolescence, but I do know that there are already a bunch of cigar shops up and down Highway 9. Of course there are a bunch of ice cream shops too, albeit most of them are chains, and many other restaurants as well.
Time will tell, but I hope these shops can forge a unique offering and earn a loyal clientele.
When finished, Crabapple Mercantile will consist of six building comprising about 22,000 sq. ft. of retail space, 23,000 sq. ft. of office space and four residential condominiums. At about 1,200 sq. ft. per retail store, that means about 18 shops will ultimately call Crabapple Mercantile home, which is walking distance from neighborhoods such as Crabapple Chase, Westminster, Kensington Farms and Waterside - and of course from Crabapple Crossing and Crabapple Crossroads, which are immediately adjacent.
The developer is Lodestone Development who can be found in Alpharetta and who also built the Ellard Mercantile Exchange at Ellard on Holcomb Bridge Road, if you would like to view an example of their projects (pictured to the right). If I had to choose a development style for Crabapple, that would have been it to a "t": I’ll call it "historical elegance"
If they build it, though, and they are - then we have to support it. Well, we don’t have to, but it would be nice. The ice cream better be good! Forget the cigars.
