The Whole Foods Uptown (and its rooftop bar) is getting closer to opening date

The long-anticipated opening of the Whole Foods in uptown Charlotte is drawing near.

This week, construction crews affixed the upscale grocer’s trademark green signage to its Stonewall Street facade. The 47,000 square-foot store, which will have a rooftop bar and eating area overlooking the city, is expected to open in early June. A spokeswoman for the grocer would not confirm an exact opening date, however.

Developers broke ground on the site in January 2016. The development, called Novel Stonewall Station, includes a tower of high-rise apartments, other shops and restaurants, two hotels and a mid-rise building with hundreds of additional apartments. The first residents of the high-rise apartments, developed by Crescent Communities, started moving in in February.

This will be Whole Foods’ fourth area store — its other locations are in SouthPark, Huntersville and Waverly. After Amazon bought Whole Foods last summer for $13.7 billion, the e-commerce giant has been lowering prices on dozens of popular staples, including bread, milk and produce.

Whole Foods isn’t one of Charlotte’s top grocers, but it still saw its market share increase last year, an unusual trend as more competitors enter the region’s cutthroat grocery market. Whole Foods is Charlotte’s No. 14 grocer by market share, according to the sales-tracking firm Chain Store Guide.

The opening of the Whole Foods expands the walkable grocery options for uptown dwellers and workers. The 18,000 square-foot Harris Teeter on West 6th Street, which opened in 2003, is the only other full-service grocery store in uptown Charlotte.

This story first ran at CharlotteObserver.com.

This story was originally published April 22, 2018 at 9:00 PM with the headline "The Whole Foods Uptown (and its rooftop bar) is getting closer to opening date."