By early October, the soon-to-be-shuttered Cooper’s Foods grocery store on West Seventh Street in St. Paul could reopen as a Southeast Asian grocery, according to the real estate broker who connected the Cooper family to the family that runs the Viengchan Oriental Market in Brooklyn Park.
The news, first reported this week by the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal, ends weeks of speculation from customers and employees, many of whom had treated the arrival of the Asian grocer as a fait accompli.
“It was an off-market deal so it wasn’t public,” said Hayden Husley, one of three commercial brokers who worked on the transaction for RE/MAX Results as dual agents representing both the buyer and seller. Gary Cooper leased the store back from the buyers with the intent of selling off his remaining inventory this month, Husley said.
Cooper said last month that the store would likely close on June 27, which is Thursday.
The brokers — who included Mark Husley and Doug Harris — had helped the owners of Viengchan Oriental Market acquire their Brooklyn Park property a few years ago and then purchase the Cooper’s store at 633 W. Seventh St., which has been serving the West Seventh Street community near the High Bridge since the 1990s. A call to the Brooklyn Park location was not immediately returned.
Hayden Husley said the buyer had issued the following statement on the store:
“We are a Hmong owned and operated family business. With the high concentration of Hmong and Asian people in and around the Twin Cities areas as well as the growing popularity of certain Asian merchandise and cuisine, our goal is to expand our services in the area to meet the needs and demands of our community. We hope and believe that we’ll be bringing more than just another market into the area, but we’ll be bringing new energy and experiences along with us. The goal is not just to serve the Asian community, but the community as a whole. We would love to have local support from the nearby communities and to continue to serve all of you.”
The market’s website advertises Thai, Laotian and Hmong cuisine, though following minor construction updates, it will likely open around Oct. 1 with grocery offerings geared as well to longtime patrons.
“I think this store will have more of an American flare to it, to keep the Cooper’s customers around,” Hayden Husley said.
Five generations of Coopers have stocked groceries at two locations along West Seventh Street and at the family’s more than century-old Chaska store.
The Cooper’s Foods’ Highland Park site in the Sibley Plaza strip mall closed in 2017, though an Aldi supermarket has since opened there. The 107-year-old Chaska store closed in early March, with Gary Cooper citing at the time competition from big box stores.
On Tuesday, Gary Cooper was didn’t have much to say about next steps.
“Why don’t you just wait to see what happens?” said Cooper, in a brief phone interview. “I don’t know what the people who bought the building want to do. Next week they’ll be in the building. Talk to them.”