From Staff Reports

Trader Joe’s, a specialty grocery store chain that is widely regarded as “hip,” announced on July 12 that it will be opening a 13,000-square-foot store on Merrimon Avenue in North Asheville sometime in 2013.

The site would put it between a bustling 19,000-square-foot Greenlife Grocery — an established natural foods market owned by Whole Foods and located at 70 Merrimon Avenue — and a future 45,000-square-foot Harris Teeter grocery store, for which site work is progressing,

Harris Teeter plans to open its store — just northwest of the intersection of Merrimon Avenue and Chestnut Street — in 2013. The three groceries would be in a row along Merrimon, just north of downtown.

If the Trader Joe’s project proceeds, the area will have the highest concentration of grocery stores of any in the Asheville area, prompting some media pundits to joke about the area needing to be renamed “Grocery Aisle,” or some other related name.

The site for Trader Joe’s is now occuppied by several small private businesses that have been given 120 day’s notice to vacated their rented premises. The notice, at least briefly, reportedly triggered an outcry from Carreta’s officials, lamenting that their dreams had been trashed.

Besides La Carreta Mexican restaurant, businesses given notice included N.Y. Fashion and a Benjamin Moore store.

Plans call for a new, one-story, retail store at 120 Merrimon Ave., according to a commercial permit application filed with the city. CAP Asheville, a Greenville, S.C.-based company, filed for the permit.

A Facebook group, “Bring Trader Joe’s to Asheville,” has been around for years and reportedly has more than 60,000 fans.

The California-based chain, which is privately held, runs more than 350 stores across the United States, with its nearest locations in Greenville, S.C., Knoxville, Tenn., and Charlotte. Other Trader Joe’s stores in North Carolina are located in Raleigh, Cary and Chapel Hill.