San Benito gets new grocery

SAN BENITO - Residents south of the expressway will have a grocery store in the late fall.

Construction on A & V Lopez Supermarket began recently on South Sam Houston Boulevard.

The family-owned company from Brownsville operates five stores in lower Cameron County.

Eliseo Castro, the general manager, said the store would be about 11,000 square feet with a full-service meat market, the store's specialty.?

Additionally, the store will bring the city 25 to 30 new jobs, Castro said.

Brother and sister Rolando Lopez and Norma Lopez-Leal will run this store.

"A lot of people had been asking us to start in that area," Lopez-Leal said Friday of San Benito.

In 1995, the late Arturo Lopez, the owner of the company and Lopez-Leal's father, had talked about buying the space previously occupied by Moody's Family Center, which had closed years earlier.

Following Lopez's death a year later, the family worked to find a space here for their business.

They finally found land in 2007 across the street from Moody's Family Center.

Evangelina R. Lopez, mother of Norma Lopez-Leal, found the property.

"We liked the idea," Lopez-Leal said of opening a store here.

Lopez-Leal said a Lopez Supermarket, owned by another family, had a store in Harlingen, but it closed nearly three years ago.

Since then, residents had been asking for a store in their area.

A sign advertising their upcoming arrival has neighbors eager, she said.

"The city of San Benito has been so good to us; they are so excited," she said. "That made us feel even better."

The south side of the city is developing, and Lopez-Leal said her family wants to contribute to that growth.

"It seemed like it was good," she said. "It was not too far and not too close."