Grocer to fill Richmond-area space vacated by Martin’s

An international grocery chain plans to open a Richmond-area store in a space formerly occupied by a Martin’s supermarket.

Virginia Beach-based Wheeler Real Estate Investment Trust Inc., the owner of the Brook Run Shopping Center in Henrico County, has agreed to a lease assignment and assumption deal between the parent company of the Martin’s Food Market chain and IM Investments, an international grocer that owns Big Apple stores.

Under the deal, IM Investments will open a Big Apple store in 58,473 square feet at the shopping center. A Martin’s supermarket occupied that space until it closed last August.

Martin's remains as a guarantor of the lease through the end of the original term, which expires Aug. 31, 2020. Big Apple has exercised a five-year renewal option on the space through 2025.

The Brook Run site was part of the Richmond-based Ukrop’s Super Market chain, which was sold to Royal Ahold, a Dutch retail conglomerate, for $140 million in 2010. Giant Food Stores, an Ahold subsidiary turned the stores into Martin’s supermarkets.

After a $28 billion, 2016 merger between Ahold and Delhaize, the parent company of the Food Lion chain, Martin’s stores in Richmond were put up for sale as part of 81-store divestiture ordered by the Federal Trade Commission.

Publix Super Markets bought 11 Martin’s stores. The Brook Run store was one of eight stores that closed.