Photo: The Foodie’s Market on Washington Street in Boston’s South End. 

The owner of the former Macy’s department store announced today, Monday, March 23, it has signed a lease with a small but growing Boston-based grocery chain to occupy nearly a third of the space in Belmont Center. 

Belmont’s Locatelli Properties said Foodie’s Urban Markets, which has operated a store in Boston’s South End since 1999 before expanding in the past two years into Duxbury and South Boston, will lease 15,000 square foot in the building located on Leonard Street. 

“Our goal is to bring an exciting mix of retailers and restaurants to Belmont Center,” said Kevin Foley, manager of Locatelli Properties.

The deal marks the return of a grocery store in Belmont Center two decades after the previous retailer, J. Bildner & Sons, closed its doors at 69 Leonard St.

Foley told the Belmontonian in December he would seek to fill the nearly 50,000 sq.-ft. commercial space with a range of national, regional or independent retailers and restaurants as tenants.

“Right now, I’m hoping spring or summer 2016 to open,” he told the Belmontonian.

Foodie’s, as it is know to legions of South Enders, was the first up-scale grocery and market on Washington Street 16 years ago as that Boston neighborhood began its gentrification. The now three-store company is known for prepared dinners and lunches, specialty departments, beer and wine selections as well as home delivery service.

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