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Save-On-Foods will open three supermarkets in Saskatoon within the next 18 months and consider adding an additional three stores in the coming years, according to its president.

“We’d like to have six stores in the city of Saskatoon,” Darrell Jones told reporters following a groundbreaking ceremony for the chain’s first Saskatoon supermarket, which is expected to open in Kensington in early 2017.

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“We’re building three; we’ve got three that are coming. If the response is excellent — and we believe it will be — then yeah, absolutely. This is a great city and easily able to take on six Save-On-Foods stores.”

Based in Langley, B.C., Save-On-Foods is owned by the Jim Pattison Group and operates about 150 stores in Canada. In July 2015, the company announced its intention to expand into Saskatchewan by opening four stores.

Jones said that the 33,000-square-foot Kensington store, which will anchor Dream Development’s $32 million commercial development in the city’s west end, will be followed by larger stores on Cumberland Avenue and in Brighton.

The Kensington development will also include a Shoppers Drug Mart store and a Scotiabank branch, Dream Development’s senior vice president of retail and commercial development said during the ground-breaking ceremony.

amacpherson@postmedia.com

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