An “experiential” upscale grocer is the first confirmed tenant for the retail and residential redevelopment that’s reshaping Briarwood Mall.
In December, city council approved Simon Property Group’s plan to tear down the vacant Sears store, one of the mall’s original anchor tenants in 1973. In January, Simon announced that “the first addition in the progressive transformation” will be Harvest Market. Demolition began in February, and the opening is planned for the fall of 2025.
A coveted “anchor” tenant when the mall opened in 1973, Sears closed in 2018. Its replacements will include Harvest Market, another retailer TBA, and 354 apartments. | Photo: J. Adrian Wylie
“It’s way more than a supermarket,” says Gerry Kettler, director of consumer affairs for Quincy, Illinois–based Niemann Foods, the 107-year-old company that launched Harvest Market in 2016. “It’s more of a mission for us. It’s basically connecting our consumers back to the people who make their food or grow it.”
Family-run Niemann owns and operates more than 100 retail and specialty stores in six Midwestern states, including thirty-eight County Market supermarkets, twenty-nine Ace Hardwares, and twelve Save A Lot groceries, among others. This will be their first entry into Michigan and their fourth Harvest Market, following ones in Champaign and Springfield, Illinois, and another underway in the Indianapolis suburb of Carmel.
“We visited Ann Arbor multiple times,” Kettler tells the Observer, “and it’s a progressive community that believes in itself. They support local, it seems, and we want to become part of that.”
He says they plan to build working relationships with area food producers for both the store and a “very seasonal, very local-driven” restaurant, as well as a bar and expansive lounge space in the mezzanine of the 57,000-square-foot facility. They’re looking for a local dairy to provide sweet cream to churn butter on site; they’ll use the buttermilk for the restaurant’s biscuits.
“The typical shopping pattern for a lot of grocery stores is whoever the primary shopper is in the household, they go there, they get their groceries, and come home,” Kettler says. At Harvest Market, he says, “it’s often couples that are shopping, or the entire family goes in there, and very often they’ll get something to eat at the restaurant, or they’ll get ice cream.
“Then they’ll shop and hang out because there may be something going on upstairs. There may be some live music on the mezzanine. There may be one of the producers doing a sampling of whatever it is that they’re making that day, like pickles or something, and it’s just very much more experiential.”
He expects the store to employ about 250, with benefits for eligible associates, including a company-funded stock ownership plan and profit-sharing.
Without mentioning any specific competitors, Kettler says that “in addition to having naturals and organics and local products, what differentiates us from a lot of other supermarkets that take this kind of a position is we still have a lot of the traditional grocery, so you can still buy Oreos and Diet Coke.”
Their customers will surely include residents of the upcoming twin four-story apartment buildings, totalling 354 units, to rise on the parking lot just to the east, along with a garage. Many more may be coming: The site is adjacent to the 270 acres surrounding the intersection of State and Eisenhower that were rezoned in 2022 to allow high-density, mixed-use development. In December, Oxford Properties and a partner announced plans to build 1,200 units on the parking lots surrounding Oxford’s landmark 777 Building.
