Staff

Writer

Peachtree

City can expect the curtain to rise on a new Harris

Teeter grocery store early next year, members of the

Planning Commission learned Monday night.

Rush Dixon,

vice president of design for North Carolina-based Harris

Teeter, said that his company is planning a full-line

operation for the site formerly used by Big Star.

Harris

Teeter, which has more than a dozen stores in the metro

Atlanta area, will be using its prototype plan, which is

about 36,000 square feet, and adopting it for this

location, which is slightly smaller.

There are

no plans to expand into the Eckerd space next door, Dixon

said, as it would be "problematic" to expand in

that direction.

"Big

boxes don't necessarily work any better," he said.

"This size fits into communities better, and fits

shoppers' time."

The

Peachtree City store should be roughly the same design as

stores currently under development in Toco Hills, Sandy

Springs and on Ponce de Leon Avenue in Atlanta, Dixon

said.

The company

is programming for a January-March opening, depending on

contractors' issues.

Most Harris

Teeter stores are open 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. But that is not

set in stone, and Dixon said the company will convene

focus groups in the area to see what the customers want.

Harris

Teeter, whose slogan is "Your Neighborhood Food

Market," is a subsidiary of Ruddick Corp. and based

in Matthews, N.C., a suburb of Charlotte. It operates

more than 140 supermarkets in the Carolinas, Florida,

Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia, with about 17,000

employees.

According

to the company's web site, Harris Teeter had record

revenues of $2.1 billion in 1998, up 10 percent from the

previous year.

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