Rumours have been swirling for months about the possibility that a Whole Foods Market is coming to Victoria.
Turns out that’s all there is to the story at this point — rumours.
The most recent whispers had Whole Foods coming to Uptown Shopping Centre, but the Austin, Texas-based grocer doesn’t appear to have the city on its development radar screen.
Whole Foods spokeswoman Ann Marie Ricard said: “Whole Foods Market plans to continue its growth in the Pacific Northwest, including British Columbia. The company has not announced a location in Victoria.”
In financial results released this month, Whole Foods said it intends to open between 38 and 42 new stores in the 2015 fiscal year.
Although the company has listed more than 120 areas where it has “stores in development,” including five in Canada — Burnaby, Vancouver and three in Ontario — there’s no sign of Victoria on that list.
What may be fueling the rumours is a development-permit-amendment application that has been submitted to the municipality of Saanich for a 45,000-square-foot grocery tenant at Uptown.
Uptown general manager Roberta Ferguson would not say which company has taken out the permit, only that it would be a new build along Blanshard Street in what will be Uptown’s third phase of development.
According to the application, the firm hired to design the building is Wensley Architecture, which submitted the development permit. Wensley would not comment on who the tenant would be.
The last time the Whole Foods rumours hit a fever pitch in Victoria was in January and February when questions swirled about who would take over three Victoria Safeway locations that the Competition Bureau forced Sobeys to sell. It was later announced that Save-On-Foods had bought the Safeway stores.
The rumour mill started churning again this week, after Whole Foods opened a store in Ottawa, its 10th in Canada, and co-chief executive Walter Robb reiterated that the firm is in expansion mode.
Whole Foods has 403 natural and organic grocery stores employing 87,000 people in three countries — 384 stores in the U.S., 10 in Canada and nine in the U.K. Last fiscal year, it reported sales in excess of $14.2 billion.
