Whole Foods Coming to Cherry Hill's Ellisburg Circle in 2014

Organic produce fans, rejoice—Whole Foods is coming to Ellisburg Circle.

The natural and organic grocery will open its first Cherry Hill location some time in 2014, announced officials from Federal Realty Investment Trust (FRIT), the company that manages the shopping center at Route 70 and Kings Highway.

“The Whole Foods Market concept and overall shopping experience is a perfect match for the Cherry Hill market,” said John Hendrickson, Northeast regional chief operating officer for FRIT, in a statement. “We are excited to bring such a tremendous and needed amenity to the community.”

It’ll be the 13th store in New Jersey for the Texas-based grocer, which operates 340 stores in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada.

“We are thrilled to offer another location and option to our customers,” said Scott Allshouse, Whole Foods Market’s mid-Atlantic region president. “Neighboring our Marlton store, the community will find the new store to rival and share many of the same amenities they have come to love and enjoy. We look forward to community engagement, opportunity, growth and creating job opportunities.”

The addition of the grocery store is a coup for the township, Mayor Chuck Cahn said.

“Cherry Hill is thrilled to welcome Whole Foods Market as a neighbor in our community,” Cahn said. “Not only are they creating local, family-sustaining jobs, they are revitalizing, renovating and reusing a property that will be transformed into a vibrant environment in the center of our town. Whole Foods Market, along with other nearby projects, is reinventing Ellisburg into a prime location for shopping in the region.”

There’s some work that will need to be done on the shopping center—mostly cosmetic—before Whole Foods moves in, FRIT representatives said, but other major improvements, including ground- and roof-mounted solar panels and a rain garden, were completed in the last year.

Whole Foods will occupy about 47,000 square feet of the 267,000-square-foot shopping center, which was left without a grocery store when Genuardi’s shut its location there last year.

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