John’s Grocery in Iowa City temporarily closing for renovations

IOWA CITY - You'd be hard pressed to find an Iowa Citian who hasn't been to John's Grocery, which has been sitting on the corner of Gilbert and Market streets for nearly 70 years.

For the last seven decades, John's Grocery - and the 168-year-old building it's located in at 401 E. Market St. - has been, for the most part, unaltered.

But all that is about to change as the iconic Iowa City store prepares to close it's doors - temporarily - for a long awaited makeover.

'She needs some love,” Develin Matthews, general manager, said of the corner store building. 'In the last 69 years it's never been closed for any renovation work.”

At 8 p.m. Saturday, John's Grocery will close for about two weeks for what store officials call a 'significant project.”

The plan is to add insulation and humidity control to the basement, which will allow long term aging for wine and beer and the space dedicated to spirits will see an addition for more offerings.

But while John's Grocery is known to many as a place for beer, wine or spirits, as the name says, it has always been a grocery store first.

'The community and the neighborhood has always and will always treat us like a corner grocery store,” Matthews said.

With that in mind, the main portion of the store will see several changes including new, shorter aisle shelves and a more open, warmer atmosphere.

'It should be substantially more open, we're hoping to make the entire place more welcoming and inviting,” Matthews said. 'I don't think we're anything short of extraordinarily excited ... I think the only regret or reluctance is to have to close.”

Those updates, added to renovations in recent years to the store's deli counter, should come in at a cost of nearly half a million dollars, said store owner Doug Alberhasky.

'It's one of those things that, it's been in my family now for 68 years and we've kind of been able to get by on doing little things here and there, but this our one big chance to go very big,” Alberhasky said. 'I'm very excited about how it's going to look.”

In 1948, Erma and John Alberhasky bought a grocery store on the corner of Gilbert and Market streets and renamed it John's Grocery. The store has remained in the Alberhasky family.

Alberhasky said John's Grocery plans to host a grand reopening and ribbon cutting on Jan. 21.