Market Basket is moving ahead with construction of a supermarket at the corner of Donald Street and Route 114 even as the company awaits the outcome of two lawsuits aimed at preventing construction of the 78,000-square-foot store.

“They're proceeding at their own risk, but as far as I know they're on schedule,” said Rick Sawyer, Bedford's planning director. “Clearly, I guess they feel the cases against them will turn out in their favor.”

After months of preparing the site for construction, steel framing for the store began to go up on Aug. 2.

The two lawsuits were filed by competitor Hannaford Bros., a Maine-based supermarket chain, in 2010 and 2012

In the first case, Hannaford appealed to Superior Court a decision by the town's Zoning Board to grant a variance to Market Basket that allowed the company to build the 78,000-square-foot store on a site with a footprint restriction of 40,000 square feet.

In that case, the town objected to Hannaford's position, arguing that it lacked the required legal standing to object to the granting of the variance.

After the town's position was upheld in Superior Court, Hannaford appealed further to the state Supreme Court.

“There's been no ruling in that case,” said Sawyer. “That's been pending there for nine months or more.”

In the other case, Hannaford appealed – again to Superior Court – a decision to rezone the Donald Street property from mixed used to Commercial 2, a zoning designation that has no footprint size restriction.

Town residents approved that rezoning last March by a margin of more than 70 percent.

“The appeal to the rezoning of the property was only recently filed in Superior Court,” said Sawyer. “They argue that it was illegal spot zoning, but we feel the rezoning was valid and legal, and had the approval of over 70 percent of the voters.”

According to Sawyer, Market Basket has submitted a bond of several hundred thousand dollars in the event that Hannaford Bros. prevails in either of the two appeals now pending.

Should that happen, Market Basket would be required to return the area to a field, said Sawyer.

In May, an attorney for Hannaford Bros., Mark Derby, argued that Market Basket was being allowed to play by a different set of rules than the ones Hannaford had to follow in 2006 when it built its store on Route 101, nearly 4 miles away from the Donald Street site.

“Hannaford has no objection whatsoever to another supermarket in town as long as it's capped at 40,000 square feet, just as the Hannaford supermarket was required to be when it built its store in 2006-07,” Derby said.