Meijer grocery store may soon be coming to southwestern Illinois

The metro-east may soon be getting a Meijer grocery store, and it would be the Midwestern company’s first location in the St. Louis region.

Meijer recently signed a contract for a 160,000-square-foot store in Glen Carbon, according to the Edwardsville Intelligencer.

Meijer spokesman Frank Guglielmi confirmed the company has a contract with the developer who purchased the land in Glen Carbon, the Staenberg Group, but declined to comment further in the early stages of the process in an email to the Belleville News-Democrat. Meijer still needs the village’s approval before it can start building.

Tim Lowe, senior vice president of leasing and development at the Staenberg Group, said Meijer is supposed to have its first meeting with Glen Carbon officials later this month.

The plan is for Meijer’s grocery and retail supercenter to replace Menards as the anchor of Glen Carbon’s $70 million, 52-acre commercial district called Orchard Town Center, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. The space will also include restaurants and other businesses.

Orchard Town Center is located at the former site of the Foucek tree farm on the southeast corner of the Plum Street and Governors’ Parkway intersection.

Menards dropped out of the project after disagreeing with the developer on the timeline for closing, according to reporting by the St. Louis Business Journal. The hardware store had signed on to build a more than 200,000-square-foot store in the space.

Meijer’s closest store to the St. Louis region is its Springfield location.

This story was originally published May 12, 2022 at 10:37 AM.