The Long Wait for a Downtown Grocery is Nearly Over

On Friday, employees of the new Cosentino’s Market Downtown were busy packing shelves with some of the 45,000 different items the store will offer when it opens at 8 a.m. Tuesday in the Kansas City Power & Light District.

But passers-by couldn’t resist peeking in the floor-to-ceiling windows at 10 E. 13th St. to see what awaits them.

Typically they broke into big smiles.

The new 33,000-square-foot urban store is nearly evenly divided between a traditional grocery — with departments such as meat, seafood, produce, bakery, liquor and floral — and a prepared foods area featuring an 83-foot-long salad/soup/olive bar, sushi bar, stone hearth pizza oven, sandwich station and hot pasta bar.

“This is a big moment for downtown — a first class, very urban-oriented grocery store,” said Michael Hurd, spokesman for the Downtown Council, an advocate for the area.

“For the last several years, the council has been doing research, and every year the No. 1 amenity downtown residents and downtown employees ask for is a grocery. It’s been the missing piece for a long time and a big step for the ongoing revitalization of downtown.”

The Cosentino family has been in the grocery business since 1948, when patriarch Dante Cosentino Sr. purchased a fruit stand on Blue Ridge Boulevard. Today the family, now in its third generation, owns 24 stores throughout the metro area, mostly under the Price Chopper banner but also Apple Market, Sun Fresh and Cosentino’s Market Brookside. The stores have more than 3,200 employees.

The Cosentinos spent more than three years planning the new downtown location so it would appeal to a broad mix — 21,000 area residents and 100,000 workers, along with tourists, who have relied on convenience and drug stores for their grocery needs or driven several miles to supermarkets in outlying areas. The Cosentinos also hope downtown office workers who live in the suburbs will stop to shop on their way home.