Jeffersonville's only Kroger just got a serious glow-up. The 90,000-square-foot Kroger Marketplace at 1027 Jeffersonville Commons Drive has completed a $3.3 million refresh, and the grocer is marking the occasion with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 7:45 a.m. Thursday, complete with $15 gift cards for the first 100 customers in line.
The project brought decor updates throughout the store along with equipment upgrades, according to the Courier Journal. Josh Harpole, president of Kroger's Louisville division, framed the investment around the customer experience, saying, “Our refreshed store is designed to offer an easier, more enjoyable shopping experience.” The Louisville Business First report on the makeover, as noted by writer Shea Van Hoy for The Business Journals, similarly described the updates as meant to enhance the customer experience.
The Jeffersonville store, which opened in 2018, sits just south of Interstate 265 and remains the city's sole Kroger location. It anchors the mixed-use Jeffersonville Commons development created by Nicklies Development, and it replaced an older Kroger in the 2900 block of East 10th Street — a relocation that, per the same account, had actually been in the works for years, with plans dating back to 2017 to move the store farther east into a new retail center.
Part of a Bigger Regional Push
The Jeffersonville refresh lands amid a broader wave of Kroger spending across its footprint. The grocer's newest Louisville-area location, at 6745 Beulah Church Road in southern Louisville, opened in November 2025, and the chain has continued investing even as competition intensifies: Publix entered the Louisville market in early 2024 with its first Kentucky store on Terra Crossing Boulevard and has since opened two more locations, with several additional stores in the works, the station's report notes.
Kroger's capital spending extends well beyond southern Indiana. The company is opening a $35 million Marketplace store in Elizabethtown — a 123,000-square-foot location featuring a pharmacy, Murray's Cheese Shop, Starbucks and a fuel center, according to Louisville Business First. Elsewhere, Kroger announced a $160 million investment to add four Marketplace stores in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and is developing a 122,000-square-foot Marketplace in South Charleston, West Virginia, as reported by Grocery Dive.
Central Division Dollars Add Up
Figures for Kroger's Central Division 2026 spending vary slightly by outlet. ReadTheReporter put the division's planned 2026 investment at $201 million for new construction, expansion and remodels, while Grocery Dive cited a $200 million figure for the same Central Division project. Either way, the division plans to remodel 15 existing stores in 2026, building on more than $60 million already spent upgrading existing stores in 2025, according to ReadTheReporter.
Kroger has also outlined more than $112 million in store projects across central and northwest Ohio for 2026, per Grocery Dive. The company's Marketplace format, which typically runs between 99,000 and 130,000 square feet and costs roughly $40 million per new build according to the grocer, continues to expand even as Kroger has said it intends to close about 60 underperforming stores nationwide by the end of 2026.
Renovations Ripple Across the Map
Georgia offered a recent example of the same playbook at a smaller scale. Kroger's Atlanta Division held its own ribbon-cutting on Oct. 2 for a $2 million renovation at the Royal Lakes Marketplace in Flowery Branch, part of a $52.7 million total 2026 investment in Hall County that also included a new Marketplace store and work at the New Holland location, according to The Shelby Report. Industry coverage has described the chain's remodeling and new-build activity under the Marketplace banner as continuing even amid store closures elsewhere, per Grocery Dive's reporting on what it called the format's growth.
For Jeffersonville shoppers, the national numbers are secondary to Thursday's event at Jeffersonville Commons Drive. Early arrivals willing to line up before 7:45 a.m. stand to walk away with a $15 gift card alongside a freshly updated store to shop in.
