Long-awaited Sun Fresh grocery opens at Linwood Blvd. and Prospect Ave.

The long-awaited Sun Fresh grocery at Linwood Boulevard and Prospect Avenue held its grand opening celebration Saturday and was heralded as a key ingredient to Prospect Avenue revitalization efforts.

The full service grocery in the Linwood Shopping Center has been a dream of urban core advocates and the Kansas City Council for years. The city invested about $17 million in public funds, including land acquisition and the cost to build the new store, to renovate the end wings of the retail center and to rebuild the parking lot.

It's unusual for the city to take the lead in a development like this, but city officials said it was worth it to jump start a struggling shopping center in a neglected part of town and to boost a major commercial corridor on the East Side.

"Every community deserves a full-service grocery store," said City Councilman Jermaine Reed, who represents the part of town that includes the shopping center. "The new Lipari Brothers Sun Fresh Market and redeveloped Linwood Shopping Center provides an opportunity to bring new and/or improved retail services for area residents."

The shopping center opened in 1982 and thrived for a time, but the grocery store closed in 2007.

Mayor Sly James and other dignitaries announced plans to revive the grocery in 2015 and hoped it would be open by mid-2016. But property acquisition took much longer than anticipated and wasn't completed until May 2016. The city bought the shopping center for $950,000 from an entity established by developer Don Maxwell, who had owned it since 2014. Financing and construction details took even longer to work out. The groundbreaking was held in March 2017.

The 38,000-square-foot Sun Fresh market is being run by John and Pam Lipari, experienced grocery operators. They expected it to employ 80 to 100 people, many from the immediate community.

This story was originally published June 16, 2018 at 10:37 AM with the headline "Long-awaited Sun Fresh grocery opens at Linwood Blvd. and Prospect Ave.."