PEORIA, Ill. (WMBD) — Peoria Grown’s Market 309 location at the Logan Recreational Center is permanently moving to Trewyn Park on Sunday.
The market’s new location will be 2219 South Idaho Street and the move is funded by a $90,000 grant from the National Recreation and Park Association to develop a Community Wellness Hub.
Leaders with Peoria Grown said the market offers fresh produce at a cheaper cost than grocery stores with the goal of making healthy food more accessible to the community it serves.
Julie Eliathamby, the founder of Peoria Grown, said they’ve outgrown their Logan Center space over the years.
“Where we are at Logan we don’t have much room for expansion so we went to the park district, and they’ve been an amazing partner with us, and they had another building which is just slightly further down the road from where Logan is,” Eliathamby said.
She said the new Trewyn Park location will allow for them to move to a cash register system for more efficiency, hire a part-time dietician, and purchase a commercial refrigerator to store more produce.
“The community has been asking us like ‘can you bring in more produce?’ because we typically sell out in 45 minutes and part of the reason is that we cannot buy more because if we have leftovers there’s no place to store it,” Eliathamby said. “So we have been needing space for a while now.”
Eliathamby said this expansion could possibly open the door for the market to eventually be available multiple times a day for the community.
“We’re hoping by the second quarter we are able to open it at least twice a week, eventually going to three, eventually going to four and hopefully eventually running it like a fulltime little grocery store down there,” Eliathamby said.
Market 309 at Trewyn Park will be open every Sunday from 11:30am-1pm. There are also two other Market 309 locations at Bradley University and the Peoria Women’s Club.
