The new Mariano’s Fresh Market store in the Riverview Plaza shopping center. (Credit: CBS)
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CHICAGO (CBS) — The first Mariano’s Fresh Market within the Chicago city limits is open Tuesday, on the former site of the Riverview amusement park in the Roscoe Village neighborhood.
The store at 3350 N. Western Ave. opened Tuesday. It is the local concept for the Milwaukee-based Roundy’s supermarket chain.
The store features a selection of regular and specialty foods, including bagels, imported cheeses, and butcher cuts of meat, along with an Italian coffee and gelato shop, a wood-fired pizza oven, a sit-down sushi bar and a pharmacy.
It opened in the place of a Dominick’s grocery store in the shopping center, which closed late last year.
The shopping center also includes a Toys ‘R’ Us and Babies ‘R’ Us store that was remodeled last year, and other retailers including a Quizno’s sub shop, a Radio Shack, a Payless Shoe store, a GNC and a Walgreens. As of June, it was 93 percent leased, Regency Centers said.
It sits on a portion of the former site of the fabled Riverview amusement park, which entertained generations of Chicagoans with such attractions as the Pair-O-Chutes Tower, the Bobs roller coaster and a notorious freak show, from 1904 to 1967.
Riverview Plaza opened on the site in 1981. The Jewel store just to the north, the DeVry University campus, the Belmont District and Area police station, and Richard Clark Park also occupy the former Riverview site.
Mariano’s stores are already in operation at 802 E. Northwest Highway in Arlington Heights, and 1720 N. Milwaukee Ave. in Vernon Hills. Each employs about 450 people.
Another one is set to open in September, at 333 E. Benton Pl. in the Lakeshore East district north of Millennium Park.
The chairman of Roundy’s, Robert Mariano, previously served as chief executive officer of Dominick’s.
