VENICE, Ill. – Venice, Illinois, residents have been without a grocery store for some time.

Now, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker is coming to town to announce a new grocery store coming to this community.

Thursday morning, Pritzker announced that a new grocery store is to be built in the future, and the funding for the project is through the Illinois Grocery Initiative.

“Illinois Grocery Initiative is really about growing those locally grown initiatives,” Pritzker said. “The idea here is that it can be a private enterprise or small business or a public enterprise coop or anything in between. The grocery initiative is about something that is locally grown helping it thrive or helping it come into existence without the state imposing an answer about it.”

Former Superintendent Ed Hightower was asked to help revitalize the struggling community. He turned to lawmakers who found a bipartisan way forward through the Illinois Grocery Initiative.

The municipally run grocery store, which is the first of its kind, aims to connect local farms with the store that will break ground this summer, located just across the street from the Venice Recreation Center and Venice City Hall.

Paired with a medical clinic, local leaders say change and development are coming to the Route 3 corridor.

“We’re looking for the next couple of months to actually break ground on that,” said Phillip White, Jr., Venice Mayor. “A lot of the properties that had to be sold have been secured. We’re ready for the demolition and the construction.”