By Bob Bong
When Walt’s Foods closed its Tinley Park location almost three years ago, it left a giant hole in the Tinley Park Plaza near 159th Street and Harlem Avenue.
That hole will soon be filled with a new 22,000-square-foot Ross Dress for Less store and a 9,800-square-foot Five Below store.
A construction fence has been erected around the property and the parking lot has been torn up along with some demolition of the Walt’s building.
Kristen Moore, a spokesperson for Brixmor Property Group, the mall manager, would not disclose when the two new stores might be ready to open. “We defer to our tenants who prefer to state their opening dates,” she said in an email.
Ross Dress for Less and Five Below did not respond to emails asking for information about when the stores would be ready to open.
Ross is a California-based discount department store chain that has a nearby store in Orland Park and a slightly larger store in the Brookside Marketplace at 191st Street and Harlem in Tinley Park.
Five Below is a Pennsylvania-based chain of specialty discount stores that prices most of its products at $5 or less and is aimed at tweens and teens. The chain also has a slightly smaller store in the Brookside Marketplace.
Brixmor also declined to say what was going on with the adjacent empty store that is still listed on their website as an Amazon Fresh Store. The space has been ready for occupancy for months and Amazon signage was taken down months ago amid reports Amazon had paused opening new grocery stores.