Whole Foods coming to former bookstore location in Orland Park

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Whole Foods will be opening a store at the former Borders location in Orland Park. | Larry Ruehl~Sun-Times Media

Updated: March 11, 2012 8:45AM

Whole Foods Market will open a store in Orland Park this fall.

The company, in a news release, said the 27,000-square-foot store will be at 15260 S. LaGrange Road. That is the former location of a Borders bookstore.

The store will employ between 150 and 160 people, the company said.

The Texas-based chain has gained a following by offering products that support sustainable agricultural practices, and featuring organic fruits and vegetables.

Bringing Whole Foods to the village “adds a whole new flavor to the market,” and the store will likely draw customers from surrounding communities, Karie Friling, Orland Park’s director of development services, said Thursday.

“Whole Foods is considered a high-end niche retailer that many communities would love to have,” she said.

Representatives with Whole Foods had been in contact with Orland Park officials for some time and had been interested in the Borders spot since the bookstore chain announced last year it was closing that store and others, Friling said.

She said she wasn’t sure whether Whole Foods preferred to renovate an existing building over building a store from scratch, but noted that “whenever you can go into (an existing) big-box space it’s cheaper than building new.”

Other retailers, such as consumer electronics and appliance chain H.H. Gregg, have been able to avoid the expense of building new stores by converting vacant buildings left behind by chains such as Circuit City and Linens ‘n Things. H.H. Gregg’s Orland Park store is in a former Sports Authority, which relocated a few blocks south into Orland Hills’ Wal-Mart-anchored Orland Towne Center.

Another example is Meijer, which renovated the former Value City store in Orland Park rather than building from the ground up.

While the recession has left many communities struggling to fill vacant big-box spaces, Orland Park has been fortunate, Friling said.

“We don’t really have a lot of vacancies in Orland Park left, which is good news,” she said.

She said that, last year, just under 5 percent of the available commercial space in the village was empty, compared with an average vacancy rate of 12 percent for the Chicago area as a whole.