Nicollet Island, East Bank and Marcy Holmes

Lunds is here!
There’s something new in the old East Bank neighborhood. Traveling across the Third Avenue Bridge from downtown’s business center, the eye first catches the mod, all-glass Cobalt Condominiums, a striking ten-story, blue-hued counterpoint to the historic brick buildings it surrounds.

But it’s what’s on the ground level of the new development that’s generating the most talk: hometown grocer Lunds’ new 26,000-square-foot market, the long-overdue answer to downtown residents’ nearly decade-long campaign for a neighborhood grocery.

“There has been a need for a full-service grocery store in the downtown Minneapolis area for some time, especially with the revitalization and renovation efforts that have occurred in this part of the city,” says Tres Lund, CEO of Lunds Food Holdings.

The new market-sized store, which opened in November at Central and University Avenues, is smaller than other Lunds and Byerly’s stores but decidedly tailored to its urban clientele. The prepared foods selection is extensive—there’s a soup station, a full-service deli, salad and sushi bars, and a Gourmet Food Fast buffet with a bi-weekly changing menu of ethnic and comfort foods. To streamline the checkout experience, shoppers form one line that feeds to the next available cashier, a technique Lunds staff borrowed from their fact-finding trips to urban grocery stores in the United States and Europe. The new market is also home to a Caribou Coffee, Minneapolis Floral, White Way Cleaners, and PrairieStone Pharmacy.

Many customers arrive by foot or bus, but there’s also an attached parking ramp. Parking is free and a set of escalators—one for people and one for carts—whisks shoppers from the store to their cars on the second level.

The East Bank store is the first of two Lunds planned for downtown over the next year. The other, still in the design stages, will be located in a historic building at 12th Street and Hennepin Avenue in the Loring Park neighborhood.

Lisa Goodman, City Council member for Ward 7 and a Loring Park resident, has been personally lobbying for a grocery store since elected in 1998 and is eagerly awaiting Lunds’ move into the neighborhood. “Downtown,” she says, “becomes much more of a neighborhood when neighborhood-type amenities, like grocery stores, are offered.”  –Rikki Murray