Retail Watchers

http://www.chronline.com/news/yard-bird ... 78ea3.html

This grocer overcame some obstacles, including a couple floods.

One has to wonder what will become of the Yard Birds building, which is largely an indoor swap meet these days. The building is showing its age inside and out. It is in a very visible location, I had heard that Fred Meyer at one point expressed interest in the site, but they recently announced plans for a new store in Centralia.

This was not a very nice store, I am not surprised to see it closing. It needed quite a bit of capital and just some general upkeep/maintenance.

There used to be some other Shop N Karts; at one time they were even in Nevada. I think they were always some sort of independent buying network/banner used by other independents for discount stores. The Shop N Kart in Ashland, OR remains open as a discount with a major focus on natural/organic items, great little store, but that formula fits in Ashland. It probably would not have fit in Chehalis.

storewanderer wrote:This was not a very nice store, I am not surprised to see it closing. It needed quite a bit of capital and just some general upkeep/maintenance.

There used to be some other Shop N Karts; at one time they were even in Nevada. I think they were always some sort of independent buying network/banner used by other independents for discount stores. The Shop N Kart in Ashland, OR remains open as a discount with a major focus on natural/organic items, great little store, but that formula fits in Ashland. It probably would not have fit in Chehalis.

There used to be two in Longview, one in St. Helens, OR, and one in Vancouver, WA. I think they were independently owned. The Longview locations were old and fairly run down. One was a former 1960s era Albertsons that had removed the bakery counter and turned it into main aisles...it basically went right through the old bakery prep area and had virtually no remodeling. The other used to actually be directly in front of the Safeway on Ocean Beach Highway where Safeway's gas station is today. Both buildings were demolished years ago.