Whole Foods Opening Pushed Back Amid Major Facelift at Ellisburg

It’ll be a few months longer before Whole Foods officially opens its doors, but the rest of the Ellisburg Circle Shopping Center will blend in with the organic giant by next spring, under plans recently approved by Cherry Hill’s planning board.

Originally pegged as a possible early 2014 opening, the natural grocer is now likely to open some time in the second quarter of 2014, with a mid-May date mentioned by officials from Federal Realty Investment Trust (FRIT), the company that manages the shopping center.

It’ll do so amid a drastically different look for Ellisburg, which is dumping its beige stucco and blue roofs for a glass-and-earth-tone look that will extend across the entire façade, as laid out in plans presented by FRIT representatives.

“The idea is to give a little more modern appearance to the shopping center,” said David Joss, FRIT’s development manager. “We’re going to get this done before Whole Foods opens.”

The changes are largely aesthetic, Joss said, with some portions of the center getting a new paint job, while anchor tenants will get the bulk of the major façade construction.

“They have the largest presence,” he said. “You want to give a nice, iconic look to all of those.”

The original plans called for the work to stop before wrapping around a portion of the Kings Highway-facing side of the center, which would have left the Post Office area untouched, mostly to save time and money, Joss said.

But when planning board members voiced their disappointment over that notion, Joss acquiesced and agreed to include that face of the building in the overall renovations.

The plans are a move to complement the center with already-approved plans for Whole Foods, which had its facelift OK’d back in May, Joss said, and face a somewhat tight timeline.

The changes to Whole Foods’ façade are extreme, involving essentially a complete teardown of the old Geunardi’s facing. That work was still awaiting permitting, but could start at any point, Joss said.

FRIT could turn over the 47,000-square-foot space to Whole Foods by Oct. 1, Joss said, and work on the rest of the center would ramp up following that, with a break around Thanksgiving until some time in January 2014 and a goal of a May finish.

“We won’t start this until the middle of August, September at the latest,” Joss said. “We’re going to go as fast as we can to get this done. I don’t want to have a grand opening at Whole Foods and have people working out there on the rest of the center.”