Westbrooke Green's New Grocery Is a Hybrid on Purpose, and the Rest of 75th and Quivira Is Filling In Behind It

Fresh Market of Shawnee opened its doors on Wednesday, Oct. 7. On the weekend that followed, employees at 7405 Quivira Road were making tortillas and conchas by hand. On the same visit, the Johnson County Post saw customers buying groceries at Westbrooke Green for the first time in close to two decades. As of this Thursday the store has been open three weeks. It keeps the same hours every day, 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Plenty of people still think of this corner as the old Dillons site, so the store inside may come as a surprise. Owner Eddie Musallet built a different kind of grocery here than the one that left in 2008, and he built it on purpose. The developer has tied the plan for the rest of Westbrooke Green to that store.

A Hispanic market that stocked up on everything else

Musallet's company runs El Mercado Fresco, and you'll see the Shawnee store under both names: Fresh Market of Shawnee and El Mercado Fresco. The chain has stores on both sides of the state line. Until this month, its only Johnson County location was the one near 103rd Street and Metcalf Avenue in Overland Park.

The Shawnee store carries a different mix. Musallet told the Johnson County Post that Shawnee gets "a lot more traditional American products" than his other stores, plus a larger Asian goods section. He described the store this way:

"Our specialty is Hispanic stores, but we're getting into more traditional (groceries). This store is like a hybrid. And we try to keep it at a good low price for the customer."

Here's what that hybrid looks like on the floor, based on opening coverage and the chain's own department list:

• Tortillas made on site, along with produce, seafood, spices and snacks
• A bakery with cakes, cookies, doughnuts and conchas, which are traditional Mexican sweet breads
• An ice cream counter that scoops Frutopia, Musallet's own ice cream brand
• A Picadeli salad bar, which Musallet says no other El Mercado Fresco store has
• Meat and poultry, deli and kitchen departments, which appear in El Mercado Fresco's standard department lineup

The salad bar shows the strategy most clearly. Musallet chose Shawnee to try something new for his whole chain. That's a sign he expects this store to draw a broader mix of shoppers than his others do.

Why a hybrid fits this corner

Paul Guastello Jr. owns Westbrooke Partners LLC, the company redeveloping the center. When he updated the Shawnee City Council in January, he explained the reasoning. "It's a walkable location for a lot of residents," he said, according to the Johnson County Post. "There's a lot of multifamily around that. So, producing (a) product that could be walked to and it services the area is very important."

Some of that multifamily housing came out of this same redevelopment. The Chadwick Apartments at Westbrooke Green went up years before the storefronts were redone. The planning commission approved a residential plan in 2020 that called for 343 apartments in three buildings of four to five stories. In practice, a few hundred households were living next to a shopping center that had no grocery store.

A store meant to be walked to has to cover more of a household's weekly shopping than a specialty market usually does. That helps explain Musallet's mix. Tortillas, conchas and a meat counter sit near American pantry staples, an Asian section and a salad bar, so one trip can cover several kinds of meals.

Why this took so long

The new store makes more sense once you know how long this corner sat waiting. Here is the short version, drawn from local reporting over the years:

The 2017 financing package used several tools. As the Johnson County Post reported at the time, it combined tax increment financing, a community improvement district backed by an extra 1.5% sales tax inside the district, and industrial revenue bonds. Since that 1.5% only applies to sales inside the district, a busy store at 7405 Quivira also feeds the funding the project was built on.

In 2023, the earlier developers blamed the stalled retail work on the COVID-era slowdown and on several tenant deals that didn't close. The 2024 agreement with Westbrooke Partners kept the original incentives. It also tied funding to milestones and added clawbacks if work fell behind. When Guastello asked for more time this January, he told the council, "I'm not asking for any more money. The money was already approved."

The grocery space was gutted and rebuilt with new plumbing, flooring and refrigeration. Guastello hoped to open in time for the World Cup crowds in June and July. That slipped to an early October target, which KSHB reported in late September as the shelves were being stocked, and the store opened on schedule.

What could follow the grocery

So far, Fresh Market is the only tenant the center has officially announced. "There's a lot coming in, following us," Musallet told the Johnson County Post. "It's gonna start filling up pretty fast."

No other business has been named, and no other opening date has been given. The list of possibilities has also changed over the year:

1. January council update: a Mexican restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, a barbershop, a nail salon, a coffee-and-donut shop and a national pizza franchise
2. October opening coverage: a barber shop, a sushi restaurant, a liquor store and a national pizza chain

The pizza franchise is the one prospect that has stayed on the list since January. Guastello described it to the council as "not Domino's, it's not Pizza Hut." He said it would be a brand new to the Kansas City metro with plans for 20 stores, and that the closest existing location is more than 500 miles from Shawnee.

The liquor store on the October list may be a business you already know. In January, Guastello said the center planned to keep Q Liquor. Mi Pueblito Meat Market, one of the few stores still open in the plaza at that point, decided not to renew its lease.

Treat everything on these lists as possible, not promised. The previous developers had tenant deals fall apart before, and three weeks after the grocery opened, the center still hasn't put a name on any other storefront.

Making the trip

Westbrooke Green sits just off 75th Street and Quivira Road, and the grocery's address is 7405 Quivira Road. The store opens at 7 a.m. and closes at 10 p.m. every day, so it works for an early bakery run or a late stop for tortillas on the way home. The rebuilt center has new windows, awnings and parking, along with drainage work. If the Picadeli salad bar is what brings you in, this store is currently the only El Mercado Fresco location that has one.

The next real sign of progress will be a named tenant. It could be the pizza brand or the sushi spot, or any business that signs a lease and gives a date. Until that happens, the grocery is the only new storefront open at Westbrooke Green.

If you live near 75th and Quivira and want to know how a reopened center up the street affects your own home, Sharon Sigman and our team are happy to go over it with you, plainly and with no pressure. We follow Westbrooke Green as each storefront fills, so when you're ready to talk about your plans, Contact Us.