Popular Asian grocery store chain H Mart’s plans to open at an Urbana location became more real Thursday.
The business announced it plans to open “sometime between 2024 and 2025.” This will be the New Jersey-based H Mart’s first store in downstate Illinois and will feature a large selection of multi-cultural grocery products, a sit-down food court, beer and wine, home goods, and many other items.
It’s been almost a year since popular Asian grocery store chain H Mart announced plans to move into Urbana, with hopes of opening by the end of 2023. H Mart set its sights to transform the former Save-A-Lot grocery building at 220 N. Broadway Avenue, which is located on the south end of downtown Urbana.
Progress at the site has been slow, causing some observers to speculate if the project would proceed. Thursday’s announcement should quell the doubters.
“I am happy. It’s worth the wait,” Urbana Mayor Diane Marlin said. “I think it’s going to be a terrific addition to the community; it’s going to be a destination.”
According to Andrea Ruedi, senior advisor for Integrated Strategy Development at the City of Urbana, the H Mart project team has submitted its building permit documents to the City of Urbana. Simultaneously, H Mart is actively accelerating the general contractor bidding process by adopting pre-bidding strategy and organizing early site visits, all intended to streamline the preparatory phase for a smoother and more efficient build.
The company calls itself “America’s #1 Asian Supermarket Chain.” It has a cult following for its selection of foods from across Asia that are otherwise hard to find.
In addition to grocery shopping, customers will be able to grab a bite to eat from its mega food court called “Market Eatery.” The store’s food court will feature authentic and fusion Asian cuisines, bringing a new dimension to the one-stop shopping experience. H Mart has meticulously created some popular food and cuisine destinations in the past. Likewise, H Mart Urbana will focus on developing, managing, and marketing its environment to enhance the surrounding community, making every shop a vibrant and successful place to keep on the leading edge of trends.
H Mart will become an important piece of the downtown Urbana landscape.
“It’s going to continue to activate the Broadway corridor,” Marlin said. “We have Station Theatre there, we have Broadway Food Hall, some businesses along Broadway. County government employees are moving to Broadway and Main Street. So this is a very important part of continuing to bring life to the Broadway corridor.”
That H Mart is taking an existing space — a very large space, which are notoriously difficult to fill — is not to be overlooked.
“We’re committed to infill development,” Marlin said. “We have a lot of parking lots downtown, a lot of blank space we’re trying to fill in. You get these big empty stores, it’s difficult to find use for them. Obviously we want to expand our tax base and revenue to support our programs and services.”
And though it has taken time for the project to gain traction, Marlin’s patience regarding potential business transactions has been tested before, as longtime Urbana observers know. (Think Jumer’s.)
“I know it feels like a long time for people, and believe me I’m the most impatient person in the world,” Marlin said. “But I’ve learned that things take time. We owned the property just north of our city hall and for over 10 years it was empty and vacant and we had two failed proposals and it was only on the third try that we found a developer that could do what we hoped to see there. Things may seem like they spring out of the ground but they never do.”
H Mart’s plans to move to Champaign-Urbana have taken many twists and turns over the years. It pivoted to the downtown Urbana location after spending several years working on a possible Champaign location.
The company owns a piece of property on South Neil Street in Champaign, just south of Tepper Electric, not far from the Green Street intersection. Despite working with the city on permits for the location, ground was never broken at the Champaign site.
Starting in 1982 in Woodside, Queens, NY, H Mart has grown to include more than 100 stores across the United States. It offers a full line of Asian foods including Western groceries, meat, seafood, produce, housewares, and ready-to-cook items.
