Back Talk Lakewood/East Dallas

Whole Foods' new plans still include outdoor seating

We noted the other day that the Whole Foods renovation sign is up, and I sent an email to WF marketing coordinator Scott Simons asking for an update. Scott just sent me an email with this update:

"We're still finalizing the construction plans, but I can tell you that we're hoping to include:

o Many environmentally-friendly features.
o An outdoor seating area with greatly enhanced landscaping.
o Additional entrances and exits to make shopping more convenient.
o An improved exterior appearance that enhances the neighborhood.
o The same in-store offerings that we had originally planned.

"That's about all I can say right now, because we are still working to finalize our plans."

I also asked Scott if anything WF is planning for the old Minyard's site will require additional zoning/PD changes. You can rest easy, neighborhood activists: "Everything we do will be within the current zoning and PD requirements," Scott says. No time-frame for the opening yet, though.

So there you have it.

The Whole Foods (temporary) sign is up, so maybe things are on the move

Well, it looks to be official: Whole Foods has put up a pretty large sign on the old Minyard's parking lot indicating that the new store is "coming soon". We don't have any other details about when or what, but we'll see if Scott Simons at WF has anything to add to the story and bring you up to date if we learn anything.

Here's a really onerous zoning process

Last week, I did an interview for a free-lance assignment with a man who owns a successful Los Angeles construction firm. He builds a little commercial and lots of apartment buildings. Given the dustup here about how evil the Dallas zoning process is, I thought I'd ask him how long it takes to get a building done in Los Angeles.

Years, he said. Years? I said. Oh yeah. You've got environmental permits, earthquake construction mandates, community standards districts, all sorts of zoning requirements. So three or four months to get permission to build a new building? I asked. Three or four months? he asked. You're kidding, right? he said. Someone thought three or four months was too long?

Whole Foods, incidentally, has almost two dozen stores in the Los Angeles area.

Some Whole Foods skinny about a new site

This is a new comment from an older Whole Food post, and it's interesting enough that I thought I would break it out:

I grew up on Coronado behind the Lakewood Country Club. I now live within walking distance of the former Lakewood Minyard's store.

While shopping last week at Whole Foods on Greenville, a female patron revealed to me that WF planned to put the Minyard's site back on the market and wait for the Albertson's on Abrams and Mockingbird to become available as their new sight. Any truth to this?

-- Judy Howard

I noted in my March magazine column that this seemed like an entirely logical course for Whole Foods once it decided not to build on the Minyard's site. The parking lot is bigger, the zoning doesn't require Whole Foods to consult the neighborhood, and Albertson's continues to lose market share, dropping to third in the area.

The report has since been picked up elsewhere (I thought I saw it on the Dallas-Fort Worth Urban Forum, but I can't find it now). Is is just another rumor? Or is there some muscle behind it? I'll make a couple of calls and see what I can find out.

Lakewood Paciugo update - look for construction in a month or so

As I dropped a couple of items at Glo Cleaners in Lakewood the other day, it struck me that we hadn't heard much about the Lakewood Paciugo progress lately. (It's slated to go up between Glo and Professional Bank, across the street from Whole Foods.) So I contacted April Charlemagne-Walding, who owns the local franchise with her husband, and asked for an update. Here's what she said: "Right now we are trying to iron out a few details. Hope to start construction in about a month, all things going well." That should put the store's opening at just the right time, as the temperature starts climbing. And hopefully, after picking up a dip or two of gelato, there will be plenty of Whole Foods construction to watch across the street...

Sorting through my Whole Foods column

The comments are already flying over my column in March's magazine, which was delivered over the weekend. Apparently, I'm a pretty nefarious fellow.

A couple of other points:

• Whole Foods is a big-deal company whose goal is to make as much money as possible for its stockholders. I don't object to that. What galls me is when it pretends that it isn't a big-deal company whose goal is to make as much money as possible for its stockholders -- and people buy into that act.

• You can find more about Whole Foods' efforts to build its Brooklyn Park Slope store here and here. One of my favorite facts: The median price of a single-family home in Park Slope is $436,000, almost four times the U.S. median and more than twice the median around here. Think that doesn't have something to do with Whole Foods' persistence in Brooklyn?

• Several readers have asked why I was willing to give Whole Foods the variance. Because, to paraphrase Louis XV's mistress, "After Whole Foods, the deluge." Think about how contentious this debate was; then, think about what happens when a developer comes in and wants to turn the land Whole Foods didn't use into its "highest and best use," the rumored mini-West Village? If compromising on setbacks would have avoided that, then I was willing to compromise on setbacks.

Whole Foods and the Internet

Whole Foods announced that it was going to renovate the Minyard's at Abrams and Gaston at 9:12 a.m. on Thursday. Wamre had a post up at 9:22, and we had our first comment at 9:54.

All of which makes this story a case study in how the internet has changed the media business.

Whole Foods' Scott Simons: Why we're remodeling instead of building

Well, the information was fast and furious yesterday as Whole Foods announced its plan to abandon building a new facility in Lakewood and instead remodel the old Minyard's building at Gaston and Abrams. We had lots of comments, passionate and thoughtful, about what this decision means for the neighborhood, why it came when it did and, of course, a little finger-pointing/wagging about who should be blamed/praised and why.

Just a little background for those of you too pre-occupied with your real lives yesterday to read every word of the voluminous posts: Here's a quick update and simple "click here" guide to who was saying what. Among the many people weighing in on the decision were Scott Simons, WF's marketing point guy out of Austin; Jeff Siegel, our contributing editor; and some comments from Jeff and city councilwoman Angela Hunt, who met with WF a couple of days before the decision was announced.

And this morning, we received another email from Simons, who offered an even-more-detailed explanation for what happened and why. Here's what he had to say ...

Whole Foods redux: It's all about the money

I have been doing this for a long time, starting as a teenager who wrote for a weekly newspaper in the Chicago suburbs to working on a big city daily as an adult. And one of the first rules of this business is that people aren't always candid with you -- sometimes intentionally, sometimes accidentally, and sometimes regretfully.

So you accept it, try to figure out what the real story is, and move on. But not this time. Whole Foods screwed up the Minyard's deal all by itself, thanks to its arrogance, several bad business decisions, and circumstances. Blaming anyone else –- be it the neighborhood or the neighborhood's representatives to the city plan commission, which is what it seems to be doing -- is being a lot less than candid.

Which Whole Foods needs to explain.

Let's not start blaming each other for a Whole Foods corporate decision

Whole Foods' decision not to build a new store, but to refurbish the old Minyard's, has nothing to do with us, the difficulty -- or not -- of making any zoning changes, and most of the other assorted topics that have been discussed here.

I'm going to have more on this in my March magazine column, but know, for now, that this was almost certainly a decision made in Austin by Whole Foods senior management (and perhaps even by Whole Foods uber-boss John Mackey). One scenario: They saw increasing competition in this part of town from Aldi's (and perhaps even Sprouts) and decided to open the new store in four to six months instead of 12.

That's the analysis of my grocery store consultant, who is based on the West Coast and has worked with most of the big national chains. He asked to remain anonymous for those reasons.