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Oglesby Mayor Jason Curran said he’s been looking for a supermarket chain to build a grocery store in Oglesby – so far without success.
During a prolonged discussion at Monday’s Oglesby City Council meeting about updating the travel ordinance, Curran mentioned in passing that he’d been in contact with 18 supermarket chains over the past 15 months. To date, the chains have replied with a simple “no” or been non-committal.
The closest grocery stores to Oglesby are in La Salle and Peru.
“IVAC has been quite helpful in working with me to create a gap analysis report that I’ve been able to share in discussions with these chains,” Curran said. “The closest success I’ve had thus far was some detailed discussions with Kirby Foods CEO looking at our market analysis to compare it to our data, but ultimately they decided to not expand north of their Metamora store. That’s OK. I appreciated the look and I’ll keep plugging away at more opportunities.”