Trader Joe’s heads to Coral Springs
Soon, shoppers in northwestern Broward County won’t have so far to drive to get $3 bottles of wine, Belgian chocolate bars, organic cookies and all of their other Trader Joe’s favorites.
The niche grocery chain with a rabid fan base has submitted plans to put its newest Florida store on North University Drive in
Coral Springs.
According to site plan drawings submitted to the city, the new store will occupy half of the building at The Walk on University that bookseller Barnes & Noble called home for the past three decades. A grand opening date is unknown at this time.
Trader Joe’s spokeswoman Kenya Friend-Daniel did not immediately respond to a request for details on Monday.
But in February, Friend-Daniel said in an email that “I can tell you we are working to bring a Trader Joe’s store to Coral Springs.”
The city’s online building permit database shows an application for “interior renovation for Trader Joe’s” at 2796 N. University Drive. However, the site plans submitted to the city state that the store’s address will be 2792 N. University Drive. When it was the sole occupant, Barnes &
Noble’s
Drive.
Developers expect the building’s tenants to be in operation this fall, a city official said.
Charlie Ladd, a Fort Lauderdale based real estate agent representing the building’s owner, Amera Group, said he could address was 2790
N.
University
neither confirm nor deny any plans involving Trader Joe’s, including whether the company has signed a lease for the site.
The site plans show that Trader Joe’s intends to occupy 12,682 square feet in the north half of the 27,000 square-foot building.
Barnes & Noble notified Amera Group in 2019 that it was no longer financially feasible to lease the entire building as it had since The Walk was built three decades ago. But it said it hoped to remain at the site, in a smaller space that it could lease at a lower rate.
Amera Group decided to divide the building for two tenants and hoped that Barnes & Noble could be persuaded to return after the construction was complete. The bookseller closed on Feb. 15 but not before posting signs urging customers to go to the company’s website and express their support for seeing it come back to its longtime home.
“We were very close to a deal with Barnes & Noble before COVID-19 hit” in March, Ladd said Monday. “Hopefully, we can move forward when the world opens up.”
The pandemic forced the chain to temporarily close most of its 627 stores, the company said on its website.
Trader Joe’s, founded in 1967 in Pasadena, Calif., has grown to more than 500 locations in over 40 states. A typical outlet stocks fewer than 4,000 products — 80 percent of them store brands — while traditional grocers carry 50,000.
Diehard fans will travel miles to buy those products, including Speculoos Cookie Butter, Mandarin Orange Chicken, “Pound Plus” Belgian chocolate bars and the $3 bottles of Charles Shaw-branded wine formerly known as Two Buck Chuck.
Sharon Aron Baron, publisher of the local community news website coralspringstalk.com, initiated an email campaign in 2015 urging Trader Joe’s fans to contact the company and open a store in Coral Springs. She also created a Facebook page, Bring Trader Joe’s to Coral Springs Florida.
She restarted the campaign in January, suggesting that Trader Joe’s take over the North University Drive site most recently leased by now-defunct hardware chain Orchard Supply Hardware.
Instead, the company opted for the smaller site.
Baron on Monday said she was thrilled that Trader Joe’s fans in the Coral Springs-ParklandMargate area will no longer be forced to drive to the chain’s other locations in Boca Raton, Pembroke Pines or Fort Lauderdale.
“It’s great news and shows what you can do when citizens get together and make their voices heard,” she said. “Companies do listen.”