Naming issue delays smaller Hy-Vee store

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BY MATT OLBERDING / Lincoln Journal Star

A legal issue regarding the name Hy-Vee wants to use apparently has delayed planning for its new smaller-concept store at 48th and Leighton Avenue.

In a letter sent last week to University Place Community Organization President Malinda Burk, Hy-Vee CEO Ric Jurgens said the company is “feverishly” working to get plans for the store developed.

But “one of the biggest holdups at this point is getting the legal authority to use the name we have planned,” Jurgens said in the letter. He did not elaborate.

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Jim Norsworthy returns his shopping cart after buying groceries at the Hy-Vee at 48th Street and Leighton Avenue. (LJS file)

Jim Norsworthy returns his shopping cart after buying groceries at the Hy-Vee at 48th Street and Leighton Avenue. (LJS file)

Jurgens, who was responding to a letter Burk sent to him a week earlier, assured her that the smaller store will eventually become a reality.

“You have my personal commitment that there will be a store there as soon as practical and that, as always, Hy-Vee will live up to its commitment,” he wrote.

Jurgens, however, did not give any indication as to when the name issue would be cleared up and when a date for the new store’s opening might be announced.

Hy-Vee spokeswoman Chris Friesleben said by email details about the new store, including a construction timetable, are expected to be disclosed at  a press conference with city officials as early as this week.

Burk said she hopes the issues don’t take too long.

“Hopefully this won’t hold them back too much,” she said.  The longer the site remains empty, the harder it will be to get residents to go back to shopping there, according to Burk.

University Place residents have been without a grocery store in their neighborhood since Hy-Vee closed the 48th and Leighton store on March 16, two days before it opened its new store at 84th and Holdrege streets.

Two days earlier, on March 14, Hy-Vee announced it would test a new store format at the 48th and Leighton site. The store is proposed to be about 20,000-25,000 square feet, with a more limited selection of products than a full-size Hy-Vee.

That announcement came after neighborhood residents and community activists organized a campaign to protest a provision in Hy-Vee’s lease that would have prevented another grocery store from occupying the 48th and Leighton location until 2014.

Hy-Vee recently announced that it will put a similar smaller-format store in a Des Moines, Iowa, neighborhood where there was opposition to the closing of a store.

Diane Walkowiak, one of the organizers of Release The Lease, a group opposed to the terms that prevented another store from moving into the Leighton Street site,  said she found the letter from Jurgens encouraging but wishes Hy-Vee would provide more information.

“I hope that in the next few weeks they can provide more concrete information such as basic design plans or a timeline,” Walkowiak said.

She said Release The Lease will continue to post updates about the progress of the store on its Web site, www.releasethelease.com.

Reach Matt Olberding at 473-2647 or molberding@journalstar.com.