1st solar-powered Harmons Grocery store breaks ground in Santa Clara

SANTA CLARA – Foodies in Southern Utah will soon have a new place to shop, as Harmons Grocery prepares to break ground on its new Santa Clara location.

Blueprints of the new Harmons grocery store which will be built in Santa Clara | Image courtesy of Harmons Neighborhood Grocer
Blueprints of the new Harmons Grocery store being built in Santa Clara, Utah | Image courtesy of Harmons Neighborhood Grocer | Click image to enlarge

The groundbreaking will be held Monday at 9:30 a.m. at the intersection of Pioneer Parkway and Rachel Drive in Santa Clara.

“It’s been a long time coming,” Frank Lundquist, vice president of store development, said.

The original plan was to open the new store in 2010, and the site preparation work was underway. But then the recession hit, Lundquist said, and the project was put on hold.

However, the delay allowed Harmons to purchase the property rather than lease it.

“It worked out well,” Lundquist said. “Now we own it. It’s always better if you own your own (property).”

The new store is expected to employ about 300 people, Lundquist said, and while a few employees are transferring from northern Utah or the St. George Harmons, most will be hired locally.

The store will be 67,500 square feet in size and will have an attached 8,500-square-foot retail pad, as well as an adjacent fuel station and the potential for more retail buildings on the site in the future.

Site of new Harmons store on the corner of Rachel Drive and Pioneer Parkway, Santa Clara Utah, May 13, 2015 | Photo by Julie Applegate, St. George News
Site of new Harmons store on the corner of Rachel Drive and Pioneer Parkway, Santa Clara, Utah, May 13, 2015 | Photo by Julie Applegate, St. George News

The color scheme of the exterior has been designed to fit in with the surrounding desert environment, with earth tones, grays and black.

About 40 percent of the store’s power will be provided by solar panels, Lundquist said. The Santa Clara location will be the first Harmons store to use solar power.

The store will have an upper level, open-air mezzanine, conference rooms and meeting spaces and will offer cooking classes both in-person and by video.

The project was designed with buildings on the perimeter and parking in the middle, to minimize the possibility of vehicle headlights shining into the windows of neighboring houses.

Harmons has 16 stores in Utah and two more underway – one in Santa Clara and another in the Traverse Mountain area of Utah County.

Related posts

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @STGnews

Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2015, all rights reserved.

Free News Delivery by Email

Would you like to have the day's news stories delivered right to your inbox every evening? Enter your email below to start!

2 Comments

  • mmsandie June 20, 2015 at 7:29 pm

    Yippee, glad to see solar being used, we have so. Ugh sun..

  • sagemoon June 21, 2015 at 8:25 pm

    Yep, good to see a business going solar.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.