With grocery stores experiencing record sales, one new-to-market grocer is continuing their metro Atlanta expansion with yet another new store. German grocer Lidl plans to open their new Brookhaven store Wednesday, July 8 at 2480 Briarcliff Road, just off I-85, in Brighten Park (fka Loehmann's Plaza). The store, which ToNeTo Atlanta exclusively reported was coming last year, opens in place of The Fresh Market, which shuttered its store in 2018.
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The 24,625 square foot store was completely renovated to accommodate the new grocer, and while smaller than most of the other Atlanta area Lidl stores which measure 36,000 square feet, it will still offer many of the amenities of the larger stores, including a fresh bakery, according to sources close to the company.
Lidl's opening at the center makes it the third store to anchor the popular intown shopping center in just the past six years. Former center namesake Loehmann's, a legendary off-price fashion retailer, closed its store at the center in 2014 amid a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. The space stayed vacant until The Fresh Market opened in July 2015, but as previously mentioned, they too, closed, shuttering the shiny new store just three years later. [The center was rechristened "Brighten Park" ahead of The Fresh Market's opening.] Enter Lidl, a growing off-price grocer which has its eyes on capturing a significant share of the American grocery market.
Lidl's current fellow anchor in the center, Tuesday Morning, is actively closing, a result of its company's restructuring following a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. Its space, like the Lidl space, has seen significant turnover over the years, being an Eckerd drug store for many years before later becoming an OfficeMax.
Lidl started 2020 by opening a new store in Peachtree Corners on May 13, and in the weeks since, has added additional new locations in Suwanee (its 100th overall store in America) and Lawrenceville. Later this summer, the company plans to open another pair of Atlanta area locations in Dunwoody and Jonesboro.
Several other stores, including those planned for East Cobb, Sandy Springs, Marietta and Woodstock(2), among others, are slated to open later in 2020 and into 2021.
In the months and years to come, Lidl also has additional stores in the works in Duluth, Roswell and Atlanta on Memorial Drive in Kirkwood, among others.
To support their Atlanta and regional expansion, Lidl announced plans in January to invest $100 million in opening what will be their fourth overall American distribution center. The center, announced in 2017 to be located in Cartersville in Bartow County, is instead coming to Covington in Newton County.
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