Manchester Square adds Food Depot, Planet Fitness

Manchester Square shopping center in Columbus, hurt by anchor store vacancies in recent years, is about to see some new life, welcoming a grocery store chain new to the market and a fitness center already in the city expanding to a second location.

Food Depot, operated by Stockbridge, Ga.-based All American Quality Foods Inc., is locating in 47,892 square feet of space at 5600 Milgen Road that formerly was home to a Piggly Wiggly supermarket. Phenix City-based JTm Corp., which operates the area Piggly Wiggly markets, closed that location last summer just as it was opening a newly built state-of-the-art and environmentally friendly store on Woodruff Farm Road.

Planet Fitness, which already has a Columbus location at 4519 Woodruff Road, across from St. Francis Hospital, is moving into a 19,421-square-foot spot at Manchester Square. That’s a bit larger than its first gym, which opened in January of last year.

The newcomers to the 174,000-square-foot shopping center in northeast Columbus join Ollie’s Bargain Outlet, which made its debut early last year as well, selling what it calls “good stuff cheap.” Ollie’s is situated between the coming Food Depot and Planet Fitness locations, with Ollie’s and the fitness center both carving out space from the 86,000-square-foot Kmart discount store that went dark in 2012 during a round of closings by Sears Holdings, its parent company.

“I know no one in Columbus is really familiar with us,” Jamey Leseueur, director of operations at All American Quality Foods, said Monday. “I think if anybody gave it a chance, I think they would be fairly impressed. We put forward a very good product, a very clean environment. ... We are a traditional grocery company. We really don’t do the floral and the banking and the hot delis and all of that. We try to offer as much variety as we can at the best price that we can.”

Leseueur said the company is tentatively shooting for July 11 to have the Food Depot open for business in Columbus. Work to get it ready has included taking up the flooring and replacing the ceiling and lighting.

“We basically redid it,” he said.

The Columbus location will be the 39th store for Food Depot, Leseueur said. The chain will then turn its attention to Macon, Ga., adding a second store there on top of the one it opened more than two years ago.

“I kind of think of Columbus like Macon. They’re both large areas, they’re kind of spread out and everything,” he said. “So I do see Columbus as a possibility for future stores. Of course, we have to see how the first one does.”

Company officials with a Planet Fitness office in Orlando, which operates the Columbus center, could not be reached Monday. A staffer at the existing Planet Fitness location in Columbus did say the new gym aims to be open by the middle of August.

Columbus building permits dated April 25 show Waddell Realty spending $209,000 on the buildout of the grocery store portion of the shopping center, with Brannen Development the contractor. Manchester Square Partnership is shelling out $925,000 for the Planet Fitness area retrofit in the old Kmart space, with J.L. Stone Construction doing the work.

Food Depot’s weekly ads proclaim the prices it charges for its goods are “our cost plus 10 percent added at the register.” This week’s circular features a “hot price” sale of 59 cents for a dozen large eggs and no limit.

The supermarket chain dates to the 1975 purchase by Gerald Taylor and Raymond Johnson of Kenney’s Market in Stockbridge, according to its website. The Food Depot name made its debut in 1988, along with the current pricing strategy. The company has grown, with most of its locations in suburban communities of the Atlanta metro area. The nearest to Columbus is about 45 minutes away in LaGrange.

The grocery company enters a local market with plenty of competition, including Publix, Piggly Wiggly, Winn-Dixie, The Fresh Market, Save-A-Lot, Aldi, Rainbow Foods, and a recent flurry of Wal-Mart Neighborhood Markets on top of several Wal-Mart Supercenters already here.

Planet Fitness, meanwhile, was founded in 1992 in Dover, N.H., and has grown to more than 1,100 locations in 47 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Canada and the Dominican Republican. The company typically bills itself as a low-price option for fitness fanatics, with a minimum down payment and a fee of as little as $10 per month. Its local competition includes Max Fitness Elite, Snap Fitness, Anytime Fitness, My Gym and CrossFit outlets.

This story was originally published June 13, 2016 at 6:23 PM with the headline "Manchester Square adds Food Depot, Planet Fitness."