Harvest Market planning grocery store at former Marsh location in Carmel

Harvest Market's first store opened in 2016 in Champaign, Illinois. (Photo courtesy Harvest Market)

An owner of farm-to-market-style grocery markets plans to open its first Indiana store in Carmel, according to a planning and zoning application filed with the city.

Quincy, Illinois-based Niemann Foods Inc. intends to open a Harvest Market grocery store at the Merchants’ Square shopping center northwest of the intersection of East 116th Street and Keystone Parkway.

Plans call for the 75,000-square-foot store to be located at 2140 E. 116th St. at the former site of a Marsh Supermarkets store that closed in 2017 along with the entire grocery chain.

Niemann Foods Director of Consumer Affairs Gerry Kettler told IBJ the store will sell both organic and traditional grocery items, and have a “full-service, chef-driven restaurant.”

Niemann Foods does not currently have a renovation timeline and estimate for when the store would open.

“We’re just excited that we’ve acquired that property and that we’re going to be able to serve the community,” Kettler said.

Niemann Foods opened its first Harvest Market grocery store in 2016 in Champaign, Illinois, and a second location in 2020 in Springfield, Illinois.

Both stores offer a seafood and meat department, deli, dairy department with a variety of cheeses and in-house churned butter, coffee shop and an educational cooking area.

Shoppers at the Champaign and Springfield stores can eat at the Farmhouse Restaurant, which sells omelets and other breakfast foods, burgers, sandwiches, flatbread, pizza and sides.

Niemann Foods was founded in 1917 by Ferd Niemann Sr. and Steve Niemann. The company owns and operates more than 100 grocery stores, pharmacies, gas stations and hardware stores in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Missouri.

Its stores include Harvest Market, County Market, County Market Express, Cenex One-Stop, Haymakers, Ace Hardware, Pet Supplies Plus and Save-A-Lot.

The Merchants’ Square building served as a temporary home for the Carmel Clay Public Library for nearly two years between 2020 and 2022 while the library’s main branch underwent renovations.

Built in 1970 as a Target-anchored, enclosed mall, Merchants’ Square was redeveloped into an open-air center in the mid-1990s. The shopping center has experienced challenges over the years due to vacancies and the closure of the Marsh store in its anchor location along 116th Street.

In 2013, urban planner Jeff Speck produced a mixed-use redevelopment plan for Merchants’ Square that never came to fruition.

Niemann Holdings LLC purchased the store’s five-acre property in November, according to Hamilton County property records.

Harvest Market would be the latest grocery-oriented retailer to plan an opening in Hamilton County.

BJ’s Wholesale Club announced plans last year for a store at 14480 Lowes Way. The location is south of the Lowe’s store near West 146th Street and the junction of U.S. 31 and Keystone Parkway.

Pittsburgh-based grocery chain Giant Eagle Inc. also filed plans last year to build a Market District grocery store in Westfield in the Wheeler Landing development district just north of State Road 32 and west of U.S. 31.

The Hy-Vee grocery chain, which previously announced plans to build a supermarket in Zionsville, also is planning a store in Fishers, at the intersection of East 136th Street and North Olio Road.

This week, Cincinnati-based Kroger Co. said it will build a $37 million, 120,000-square-foot Kroger Marketplace store at the northeast corner of East 116th Street and Allisonville Road in Fishers. The store would replace its current 70,000-square-foot store across Allisonville Road at 7272 Fishers Crossing Dr.

Midwestern retail giant Meijer Inc. plans to build a small-format 90,000-square-foot grocery store on the west side of Noblesville near the northeast corner of State Road 32 and Little Chicago Road.

Also in Noblesville, Costco Wholesale Club is working to build a store at the southwest corner of East 148th Street and North Pointe Boulevard—near the busy intersection of State Road 37 and East 146th Street.