Whole Foods Market still plans to open a store in Boise. It just won't be in 2009.

The earliest the natural foods grocery store would open is 2010, said Jim Kissler, a Boise partner in the project and owner of the Downtown land where the store is planned.

"Whole Foods continues to express an interest in this location," Kissler said. "They have not said that they're not coming."

Whole Foods recently terminated eight leases for stores scheduled to open in 2010 and 2011 and downsized three other leases, according to a financial report published on the Whole Foods Web site earlier this month.

The report did not identify the stores by location, but the Boise store survived, Kissler said.

Whole Foods is "excited about having a store in Boise and (is) currently in discussions with the developer to enhance the site plan," Ben Friedland, Whole Foods Rocky Mountain region marketing coordinator, said via e-mail.

The store is part of a planned mixed-used retail and residential space that would include a hotel and condominiums.

Once construction has begun, the project will take a year to complete, Kissler said.

The entire project - not just Whole Foods - has been delayed because of a lack of commitments from prospective tenants, Kissler said.

"We can't get all three components to come to the table simultaneously and say, 'Let's go, our timing is good,'" he said. "It's a changing situation all the time. Almost any development that maybe was on the drawing boards in '08 is getting looked at and evaluated."

The revised site plan, which Kissler said calls for a 40,000-square-foot store - down from 55,000 square feet - has not been seen by the city, which was supposed to meet with a Whole Foods architect this week.

"We were expecting to hear back from them by this week, and we haven't yet," said Boise Planning Director Hal Simmons.

Plans for the store and complex have changed multiple times since the November 2006 announcement that the store was coming to Boise.

Early this year, Austin, Texas-based Schlosser Development nixed a planned 17-story hotel/condo tower in favor of a seven-story structure with the hotel and condo placed side-by-side.

Speculation on the project's fate began in August after Whole Foods announced it would suspend its dividend and open fewer stores in 2009 in response to poor quarterly performance.

Across the country, several planned Whole Foods stores appear to be in flux amid the economic downturn.

Construction on a store in Basalt, Colo., has been delayed until spring because of the national credit crunch, the Aspen (Colo.) Times reported Thursday.

The company's fourth-quarter earnings were $1.5 million, compared with $34 million in 2007.

An acquisition of Wild Oats Markets Inc. partially was to blame for the discrepancy.

Chad Dryden: 672-6734