“It’s good to have it in close,” said John as the pair made its way through the produce section at the brand-new Hy-Vee in Spring Lake Park on its opening day.
“They have different things to buy and they have some good sales,” said Cynthia. “We just like to walk around the store, too, to see what’s going on.”
Company officials from the headquarters in Iowa joined elected officials from across the North Metro–along with local chamber of commerce leaders–to celebrate the store’s grand opening on Tuesday, May 25.
“It’s a little bigger than I thought it would be,” said Spring Lake Park Mayor Bob Nelson. “It’s long-awaited. We wanted Hy-Vee, and we waited patiently…and now the day is here.”
The store sat mostly completed on the exterior for well more than a year while reported design changes for the interior kept going through the approval process at city hall. COVID-19 also played a big role in the delays, said company officials.
“Some things were just truly based on what’s happened over the last year,” said Christina Gayman, a spokesperson for Hy-Vee. “We were ultimately hoping to open sooner than this, but with COVID, obviously, a lot of protocols had to change, a lot of the ways our construction teams had to work changed for a while.”
Gayman also provided no updates on a timeline for the planned Blaine store, where an empty lot on Main Street has sat largely unchanged for more than two years. She said it remains an active project. The company will soon open a store in a converted former Rainbow store in Maplewood, but reportedly decided against building a store in Columbia Heights.
The Spring Lake Park store is the 12th in the Twin Cities. The chain has 275 stores across eight Midwestern states.
