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HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WHNT) – Community leaders broke ground on the $50 million Whole Foods Market shopping center development Wednesday morning.

City leaders celebrated what they see as the development’s potential to inspire new life on Memorial Parkway.

“We’re taking an area that has reached its economic life, we’re taking it down and reproducing a new upscale development,” said Mayor Tommy Battle.

The 10,000 square foot Whole Foods shopping center will be built on the northeast corner of Bob Wallace Avenue and Memorial Parkway. Health and lifestyle minded retailers, Mountain High Outfitters, Orange Theory Fitness and Maki Fresh, will also open stores in the whole-foods anchored shopping center.

The hope is the upscale development will draw shoppers from across the Tennessee Valley, and spur grown north and south on the parkway.

“We have a 5 lane road, East/West corridor, we have a superhighway coming North/South of the parkway, so I think we`re going to be in very good shape for the type of retail development we`re having,” said Battle.

Whole Foods is slated to open in 2016. It will be only the third Whole Foods Market in the state.