The Fresh Market That Never Was (Olive Branch, MS)

Today's post highlights DeSoto County, MS, retail.

Today's post is a bit of an interesting one - have you ever come across a building that was built for one retailer, but another retailer wound up taking it over before the intended retailer was ever able to? That's the situation we'll be examining in this post. This all takes place in Olive Branch, MS. In particular, the building of question is the centerpiece of "Phase II" of recently-constructed shopping center Olive Branch Crossing. (If you consider 2015 recent, that is!) I already have a blog post covering the construction of "Phase I," which you can check out here. I also have an album on flickr featuring a few photos of the center once its stores were opened to the public.

Olive Branch Crossing in and of itself has a fairly storied past, despite being so relatively new, due to the sheer number of alternative site plans that were thrown around regarding the center. I'm sure plenty of conceptual drawings is the norm for the professionals who plan these developments, but making so many of the drawings public does not seem to be standard operating procedure. I didn't post but two of the site plans myself - one in the aforementioned blog post, and one in the aforementioned flickr album. But even in just those two alone you can see a drastic difference between the planned auxiliary shops next to Academy Sports + Outdoors, and especially the plans for Phase II of the center, to the left of Hobby Lobby and Five Below.

Unlike the plan at the first link (in my prior blog post) which showed restaurants and excess parking occupying the space, the final plan for Phase II included a nearly 32,000 square foot structure to be split among a big-box store and a few smaller adjacent shops. This was the plan used in construction of Phase II, and may be seen in closer detail at Olive Branch Crossing's official leasing page here. (I'd suggest holding off on that link until the end of this post, however - it includes spoilers!) But where the plan for Phase II was carried out exactly as, well, planned, the big-box retailer set to occupy the main space of Phase II would encounter many bumps in the road...

As for the identity of that retailer? As you can probably tell from the title of this post, the main 21,914 square feet of Phase II of Olive Branch Crossing was initially set to be home to The Fresh Market. The Fresh Market's planned construction in Olive Branch was originally mentioned back in October 2015, not long after Phase I of the center was completed. Groundbreaking took place very soon after the announcement was made and construction progressed quickly, with an anticipated opening date in summer 2016. This particular photo was taken on June 18th, 2016, however, and shows that at some point construction met some sort of snag and subsequently stalled out.

The above two photos were taken in early August 2016, and show that construction finally was able to move forward from its earlier delay. Still, though, the pause forced the projected opening of The Fresh Market to be shifted to summer 2017 instead, as you can see on the adjusted "coming soon" sign in the bottom pic.

November 2016 rolled around, and the building was completed, waiting on its tenant to move in. All of the photos you've seen up to this point were already featured on the blog back in this post, at which point I noted that I would likely get pictures of the store once it opened in summer 2017 and post them either here or on flickr. At this stage of the game, it seemed The Fresh Market had a pretty healthy six or seven months in which to finish out the interior of the store in preparation of their anticipated target opening.

That said... January 2017 rolled by, and still no additional work had been done on the property. What's more, the "coming soon" sign advertising The Fresh Market's summer opening had been removed. What gives? Well, as it turns out, nine months earlier in March 2016, The Fresh Market swapped hands, coming under the ownership of Apollo Global Management. Understandably, it appears that this change in ownership had some effect on the stores currently under construction, including the one here in Olive Branch. And indeed, in March 2017, it was this unforeseen change that was attributed to yet another delay in this store's planned opening: news outlets (including one that used a photo from the blog!) began to report that summer 2018 was the new goal, two years later than the originally planned opening date.

Simply delaying the projected opening once more was a nice way to save face, but I think that by that point, most people involved with the project knew that it was becoming less likely by the minute that The Fresh Market would actually move into the space after all. Ultimately, these fears were confirmed when, in mid-October 2017, the DeSoto Times-Tribune broke the news that The Fresh Market would not, in fact, be opening a store in Olive Branch. In the same article, the DTT revealed an announcement on a new tenant would arrive within a couple of weeks after publication. Eager commenters hoped a different specialty grocery store, such as Whole Foods or Sprouts, would fill The Fresh Market's shoes. Those commenters, unfortunately, would be disappointed...

...but more on the new tenant later. First, I want to take you guys on a tour of the property as it stood on November 4th, 2017, just mere weeks after the announcement was made that The Fresh Market had backed out of its intentions to open a store in Olive Branch Crossing. Before looking at the to-be-Fresh-Market-no-longer space itself, the above two photos take a brief glance at the remainder of the shopping center. At least one tenant had put down roots in the otherwise empty "Phase II" structure since the start of the year: Orangetheory Fitness, as can be seen in the rightmost bay of the building. Beyond it lies "Phase I" of Olive Branch Crossing, home to original tenants Academy Sports + Outdoors, Hobby Lobby, Five Below, and another newcomer at the time of this photo, Chicken Salad Chick.

Moving onto the former Fresh Market space now. (Can it technically be called "former" if the retailer never even occupied the space to begin with?) The façade is quite attractive. Thankfully, I don't think it was built to The Fresh Market's specifications so much as it was designed to match the rest of the shopping center, so the new tenant was not going to be faced with having to make any modifications to the exterior.

A close-up of the store's entryway reveals the planned setup was to have The Fresh Market's entrance slightly off-center so as to allow for (what I believe to be) an indoor café seating area in the left half of the vestibule. An outdoor patio is directly adjacent to that area (as shown in the second photo above), which is what I'm basing my assumption on.

Peering directly through the front windows of the store, however, reveals perhaps the most jarring thing about this space: beyond the fully-completed exterior, absolutely NOTHING has been done inside! It's literally just an empty shell, with nothing more than a dirt floor. If nothing else, this confirms that The Fresh Market did indeed do zero work on outfitting the interior of the building. This work would be left entirely up to the new tenant to complete.

A quick peek at the empty bays to the left of the also-empty Fresh Market space. I didn't venture up to their windows, but it stands to reason that they only had dirt floors inside as well. I imagine Orangetheory Fitness, too, was faced with the same obstacle before moving in to the right of the Fresh Market space. As of today, Orangetheory remains the only tenant to have occupied one of these auxiliary shop spaces.

Here are a few more looks at the building's façade, as viewed from several different angles. As I said, I quite like the look of this exterior. Layout-wise, you can tell it was designed for a grocery store, what with the indoor café space and outdoor patio... but from a design standpoint, it has a generic enough feel to it that it can reasonably pass as any type of retail establishment (and I do mean "any" - a hint there as to what this space would ultimately become!) without so much as a second glance.

Another look at OrangeTheory Fitness, this time from a slightly closer vantage point. OrangeTheory was indeed open at the time of this photo, and there were a few cars out in the parking lot belonging to the gym's patrons.

...speaking of which, as a matter of fact, I believe that's why I got this photo: a customer from OrangeTheory walked out to return to their vehicle, and I had to pretend I was out here photographing the nice fall foliage instead :P  Hey - in my defense, at least it truly was some nice foliage, haha!

A handful of additional façade pics to wrap up our tour of the property from November 2017, including a couple of wide shots of the entire structure to round us out at the very end. As you can see from the third photo from the top, OrangeTheory Fitness was all alone on the rather large roadside sign for Phase II of Olive Branch Crossing. And in the bottom photo, you can see on the left edge a portion of the "Available" sign belonging to the center's leasing agents.

True to the word of the DeSoto Times, I was able to discover the identity of this space's replacement tenant at Olive Branch Crossing's official leasing page (which, again, may be viewed here); in fact, I actually found it a few days before that article was even published, lol :P  But the general public, on the other hand, would have to wait a few more months, until late January 2018 when The Commercial Appeal made the big reveal: drumroll please...

...Planet Fitness! As I alluded to earlier... much, much different than the grocery store that was originally planned to fill this space, haha! If there is one good thing to be derived from all of this, it's that this represents Planet Fitness's first location in DeSoto County, so at least locals are still getting a new chain out of the deal instead of an additional location of another store already doing business elsewhere in the county. But still, all things considered, this is without a doubt a disappointment for anyone who was still holding out hope that a specialty grocer would open up shop in this building.

The previous photo was taken from across the street, and shows the "Phase II" building as a whole; for the remainder of these photos, we've entered the parking lot and are taking a closer look at things. While Planet Fitness's opening was announced in late January, signs did not go up on the exterior until the last week of April; these photos were taken the first weekend after the signs were installed, on Friday, April 27th, 2018.

Here's a close-up of the center of the façade, followed by a close-up of the Planet Fitness logo itself. As I've mentioned several times so far in this post, at least the exterior has been able to maintain its integrity despite the tenant switcheroo; it still looks very nice. Even better, I think Planet Fitness's logo looks quite suited to the shape of the signage fit-out box: almost as if it was meant to be!

Some more shots of the freshly-logo'd façade show that besides putting up its signage, Planet Fitness has made no other alterations to the exterior of the building. Even the gate surrounding The Fresh Market's intended outdoor patio seating area has been left intact! For Planet Fitness, this is actually quite remarkable - and welcome. Keep in mind that Planet Fitness is a chain known to take up shop in empty or abandoned buildings, sometimes in less than desirable areas (such as dead malls), and paint the outsides of said buildings a gaudy combination of purple and yellow to reflect their color scheme. Since this is a relatively new shopping center in a still up-and-coming area of a growing town, such a paint job would no doubt have been frowned upon by many, including city officials (and myself!). So I'm thankful that Planet Fitness has opted for a more sedate presence here in Olive Branch.

As a matter of fact, the only place besides the logo on the storefront that you'll see Planet Fitness's signature purple and yellow colors are on the roadside sign for Phase II of the shopping center, facing travelers on Goodman Road. In these two photos, I'm looking westbound, straight toward the sunset on the afternoon these were taken. In addition to the Phase II roadside sign, in the background of the first shot you can also see the two roadside signs for Phase I of Olive Branch Crossing. I believe I've mentioned this before, but I still find it unnecessary that Phase I has two signs so close to each other. The signs are very large and, in my opinion, not the best-looking either... so an additional sign bearing the exact same information, just with a different logo on top (the Academy Sports and Hobby Lobby logos switch - that's literally the only change between the two), isn't really needed from both a practical and an aesthetic standpoint. That's my two cents, anyway.

As you can see from the first shot in this particular group, OrangeTheory Fitness remains operating in the rightmost bay of this Phase II building, which makes for a rather interesting scene - two gyms soon to operate right next to one another! At nearly 22,000 square feet compares to OrangeTheory's 3,000, Planet Fitness is a much larger gym, too, so hopefully OrangeTheory will still be able to compete once Planet Fitness does finally open. Elsewhere, to the left of Planet Fitness, the remaining auxiliary shops remain empty, awaiting their first tenants.

I didn't get any pics through the storefront windows this time around, seeing as how there were several "hard hat area" signs what with all the construction taking place inside to prepare the interior. (I also wasn't sure if construction was actively taking place while I was on-site either, so I didn't want to chance any workers seeing me, either.) But I did get this zoomed-in shot looking through the windows in what would have been The Fresh Market's indoor café seating area, where you can see several Planet Fitness promotional signs and materials. I'm not entirely sure what this room was being used for, but since it does have exterior access, it could be operating as an employee recruitment room - or, alternatively, a membership sign-up area - in advance of the gym's opening.

Last but not least, a couple of wide views to finish up this post, with the top one purposefully angled to match one of the photos featured earlier in this post... and the bottom one taken at night on another pass by the building, showing Planet Fitness's newly-installed signage all lit up. (My photo doesn't show it all that well, but trust me, it looked pretty sharp!) For a gym that doesn't have the best sense of exterior design (at least in my opinion, based on other locations I've seen photos of on the internet), Planet Fitness has really impressed me with their future Olive Branch Crossing location. Sure, it's not The Fresh Market as was planned, and it took several years to get to this point, but it's a new tenant filling up a new development, and that's all that really matters... right?

That's what's going on in Olive Branch. Until next time, thanks for checking out the Mid-South Retail Blog, and as always, have fun exploring the retail world wherever you are!

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