What had been rumored for weeks on social media was confirmed last week — another Lake County grocery store is closing.
The Mariano’s on Grand Avenue in Gurnee, west of Hunt Club Road, is scheduled to close on July 17, according to reports. Corporate parent, Cincinnati-based Kroger, has pulled the plug on the store.
The loss of the Mariano’s, which seemed to be doing a solid business the times I was there despite competition from a nearby Jewel-Osco on Hunt Club Road, south of Grand Avenue, leaves area shoppers with one less option.
The closure will leave three Mariano’s locations in the county: Bannockburn on Waukegan Road, north of Route 22; Lake Zurich on Route 22; and Vernon Hills, on North Milwaukee Avenue at Gregg’s Parkway.
The company closed its Buffalo Grove store last summer, along with two others in Cook and DuPage counties, and furloughed about 1,000 workers nationwide.
Lake County is littered with former supermarket sites, as the decades have not been kind to an industry whose operating margins are notoriously thin. Grocery chains such as A&P and National Tea became extinct in these parts back in the 1970s. Eagle Food stores disappeared in the early 2000s, selling assets to competitors Kroger and Jewel, among others.
Many of those locations have been repurposed into local shopping locales or totally different retail offerings. Like the old A&P on Hawley Street in Mundelein, which is now an Ace Hardware.
Or the Jewel once on Cook Street in Libertyville. It was razed, and in its place is Liberty Towers, an affordable senior living building.
Even Kroger left the Waukegan market, leaving its store in the Waukegan Plaza on the east side of Lewis Avenue, north of Glen Flora Avenue, to change into a Dominick’s, which was abandoned some time ago. Fortunately for city shoppers, Aldi, Lewis Produce and Tony’s Fresh Market have filled the grocery gap along the Lewis Avenue corridor.
Dominick’s, a nearly century-old company that once had some 70-plus outlets across Chicagoland, went belly up at the end of 2013 as competition from independents and chains took its toll. The Gurnee Dominick’s, once a part of Safeway Inc., became its current iteration as a Mariano’s in the sale of a number of Dominick’s stores to competitors. It has been operating as a Mariano’s for the past dozen years.
Mariano’s was founded by Bob Mariano, a former chief executive officer with Dominick’s Finer Foods, until the company was dissolved. The first Mariano’s location opened in 2010. It had been under the Roundy’s Supermarkets label, based mainly in Wisconsin, until its sale to Kroger, one of America’s largest grocers, serving more than 11 million customers daily.
Certainly, unionized workers at the soon-to-be-shuttered store will be offered jobs at other company locations, but none are close to Gurnee. Unless another grocer moves into the building, it leaves a breach in the village’s energetic retail sector and an empty small-box storefront.
It also leaves Gurnee shoppers one less provider of groceries. Remaining, though, are the Jewel, Aldi’s on Grand Avenue at Almond Road, and Target in the Grand-Hunt Center near Jewel. Also on Hunt Club Road at Grand Avenue are Walmart and Sam’s Club.
Ironically, the Jewel and Mariano’s might have come under the same market umbrella if a merger between Kroger and Albertsons, Jewel’s parent, headquartered in Boise, Idaho, had been finalized following antitrust opposition by unions, federal and state officials, including Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul. Merger plans dissolved in 2024.
The consolidation would have created the largest grocery chain in the U.S., combining nearly 5,000 stores and about 700,000 employees, according to published reports. However, there were fears the megadeal would reduce competition, raise prices and weaken the bargaining power of labor unions representing employees at the two companies.
Since the merger was blocked, the two grocery rivals have been locked in a rancorous and active legal fight over each other’s role in the scheme. Albertson’s is seeking $600 million from Kroger for breach of contract, among other allegations.
At the time of merger talks there was speculation the Gurnee Mariano’s wouldn’t make the cut because of the nearby Jewel’s long-time — the company name has been around since 1932 –market dominance across the region. With the idea of merging the two firms way off the table, we’ll never know who would have survived that head-to-head competition.
Yet, that question has been answered somewhat by Kroger’s closing of Mariano’s. Some Gurnee residents, I am told, have lobbied for a Trader Joe’s to enter the north-county market.
The closest Trader Joe’s, part of German-based Aldi, is in Libertyville, ironically, across Milwaukee Avenue from the Vernon Hills Mariano’s. Perhaps a Trader Joe’s could take over the soon-to-be-vacant brick-and-mortar store in Gurnee.
Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor. sellenews@gmail.com. X @sellenews
