AUBURN GRESHAM – Six Save A Lot grocery stores in the southern and western U.S. could reopen this fall, nearly two years after parent company Yellow Banana announced plans to renovate them.

Save A Lot in West Garfield Park, 420 S. Pulaski Road, will celebrate a grand reopening in early September, Sarah Griffin, Save A Lot’s director of corporate communications, said in a statement to Block Club.

“Barring further delays in the project,” five more Yellow Banana-owned stores could open in the next few months, Griffin said.

The Save A Lot stores in West Pullman, 10700 S. Halsted St., South Shore, 7240 S. Stony Island Ave., and South Chicago, 2858 E. 83rd St., are “tentatively” scheduled to reopen in October, Griffin said.

Stores in Auburn Gresham, 7909 S. Halsted St., and West Lawn, 4439 W. 63rd St., could reopen in November, Griffin said.

“We are making great progress and have already completed a lot of work in all six stores,” Griffin said. “We are working closely with the relevant authorities to ensure that work progresses.”

Officials at Ohio-based Yellow Banana and Save A Lot are working with members of the West Side community to plan a celebration to mark the reopening of the West Garfield Park stores, Griffin said.

To redevelop these six Save A Lot stores, Yellow Banana received $13.5 million in tax increment financing in 2022, plus an additional $13 million in New Market Tax Credits and private funds.

At the time, Yellow Banana officials vowed to improve the run-down stores and offer “high-quality food at affordable prices in an attractive ambience and an aesthetically pleasing and clean structure.”

Yet nearly two years after Yellow Banana was approved for funding, none of its locations have reopened permanently. Neighbors, local authorities and community organizations said the company missed several deadlines, left stores in disarray and dodged questions.

The West Garfield Park store, still under the old ownership, was closed by the city in 2022 after a rat infestation. Yellow Banana took over the store, reopened it, and closed it again in the spring of 2023 to begin a $2 million renovation.

Yellow Banana officials initially said the renovation would take 10 weeks. Months later, they told neighbors the store would reopen in March. When Block Club visited the store in March, it was still closed and boarded up.

Management had previously promised improvements such as refrigeration units, on-site security personnel, special carts for seniors and customers with disabilities, surveillance cameras, signs, decor and a remodeling of the building’s facade, she previously told neighbors.

Several planned opening dates have also passed for the Auburn Gresham store.

Yellow Banana co-founder Joe Canfield told his neighbors in June 2023 that the “reimagined Save A Lot” at 79th Street and Halsted would reopen the following month.

Construction on the store began in June, but “delays in (city) permits” that were later granted delayed the summer opening, a company spokesperson said. Store management was targeting mid- to late-October 2023 as the date for a new grand reopening, a spokesperson told Block Club at the time.

The autumn deadline passed without any news from the company.

Save A Lot then announced in January that the Auburn Gresham store could reopen in April. Yellow Banana “has experienced a number of delays in both construction and equipment on the project” but is making good progress, company officials previously said.

When Block Club visited the South Side store in late March, days before its planned reopening, the store was closed and under construction. That reopening date also passed without any response from Yellow Banana officials.

The opening of the Auburn Gresham store is now scheduled for November.

A similar story happened in West Pullman.

Renovations at the West Pullman Save A Lot store were originally scheduled to begin “no later than” summer 2023, Ald. Ronnie Mosley (21st) previously told Block Club.

But the deadline has “passed,” Mosley said.

Yellow Banana officials then told Mosley that they had set May 1 as the target for the grand reopening of the Save-a-Lot store in his district, Mosley had previously told the Block Club.

The store is now scheduled to reopen in October.

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