With Amazon Fresh coming soon to different suburb in the region, when will Elk Grove spot open?

Amazon Fresh was built at The Ridge shopping center more than two years ago. For the most part, it has sat vacant as residents anticipated the store’s opening.

Its delays have marked somewhat of a deja vu moment for Elk Grove residents who remember the “ghost mall,” a project for a mall in the south side of town that was planned but never actualized after 10 years of anticipation. The ghost mall was demolished and has since transitioned into the site for Sky River Casino, which opened in 2022.

Amazon spokesperson Griffin Buch confirmed in an email that Amazon Fresh Elk Grove store plans to open at the popular shopping center, at the southeast corner of Elk Grove Boulevard and Bruceville Road, but did not disclose a specific date.

The Bee reported Thursday that the first Amazon Fresh store in Northern California to open will be in Roseville, at 6780 Stanford Ranch Road. It will open Aug. 22.

Buch recently said in an email the company “looks forward to serving the community with high-quality grocery items at a great value.”

Amazon Fresh, according to the e-commerce company’s website, is an online and physical grocery supermarket concept. Customers who shop in-store can use a specialized Amazon “Dash Cart” that uses sensors to scan items in the cart; shoppers then exit the store in a special lane and receive a receipt on their mobile device.

Elk Grove’s store was among numerous locations around the U.S. that were slated to open. It was first announced that Amazon would bring a grocery store to The Ridge, a shopping plaza in Elk Grove owned by Pappas Investments, in 2022. It was once expected to open in early 2023 but faced months of delays as Amazon slowed its rollout.

The Elk Grove location is one of at least three anticipated Amazon Fresh grocery stores in the Sacramento region. The others were previously reported to be located in Roseville and the Arden Arcade neighborhood. In June, The Bee reported that Sunrise Village shopping center in Citrus Heights listed a grocery store as “coming soon” to a space measuring more than 38,000 square feet.

Amazon Fresh filed for liquor licenses with the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control on May 14 to be used at the potential Sunrise Village location. However, Buch did not provide a comment on specific locations.

Pappas Investments’ senior vice president and leasing director, Kelly Rule, said in an email last month that she had not heard an update recently, regarding the grocery store’s Elk Grove opening.

“We have seen an increase in activity with store operations,” Rule said. “But we have not been given any notice of an opening date.”

Other residents anxiously wanting the store to open have looked inside the store as development continues.

Peeking inside the Elk Grove store, as of Wednesday, it had operative lights, empty shelves, pallets of items, checkout counters and organized food sections such as fruits, vegetables, seafood and poultry.

Why the delays?

As early as March 2021, Bloomberg reported on plans for Fresh locations across the country, including sites in California’s capital region. That spring, construction workers hustled to move dirt at The Ridge, making way for the Amazon Fresh Elk Grove site.

There are 45 total locations currently operating in the U.S., according to Amazon’s website. Amazon Fresh has grocery store locations in greater Los Angeles and Orange County, Illinois, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington state and D.C.

Those 45 only include Fresh grocery stores and not those that operate only as distribution or pickup centers.

There’s an Amazon Fresh pickup center at 3640 Ramos Drive in West Sacramento, which operates 7 a.m to 9 p.m. daily.

“We’ll continue to open new Whole Foods Market stores, and will do so selectively with Amazon Fresh as we see results we like,” Buch said in an email July 10. “We’re encouraged by early signs of our new store design in Chicago and Southern California, and will proceed adaptively.”

Buch said that their goal is to build a “best-in-class” grocery shopping experience, whether shopping in store or online.

“We already have a large online grocery business and millions of products available for fast delivery, and the next step is to continue building out our physical presence — which will require significant innovation and persistence,” Buch said.

No grocery shopping yet. How about some motorcycles?

As the Amazon Fresh Elk Grove parking lot sat empty of shoppers, a group called Elk Grove Motorcycle Riders took it upon themselves to meet in the empty lot every other Wednesday. It has been their meetup spot for the last year.

“Amazon Fresh wasn’t open and so we knew that this part of the parking lot was always kind of empty. So that’s what the deal is with this spot here,” said Scott Barcellos, a member of the Elk Grove Motorcycle Riders. “We heard in the last couple of days that they are going to open the store, so we might find another spot.”

Barcellos said they’re not really a club or even a riding group — just a bunch of residents who get together and bond over their love of motorcycle riding.

“We just kind of hang out on Wednesday nights. A group of bikers just kind of come hang out. It’s a revolving crowd. I see some of the same faces from week to week, but then I see some other people I haven’t seen before and then sometimes I’ll see people that haven’t been here for six months and they’ll pop back in. It’s mellow thing.”

Barcellos said as a resident, he looks forward to checking out the new store. As far as their meetups, he said the parking lot wasn’t official to begin with. They’re looking for other locations in case they need to change destinations. But they hope to not have to go too far.

“We could probably go just a couple of rows over if we had to,” Barcellos said.