365 by Whole Foods to close at Bellevue Square

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365 by Whole Foods to close at Bellevue Square

Post by Brian Lutz »

http://downtownbellevue.com/2017/10/12/ ... ue-square/

I've been here a couple of times; I'm not quite sure what they hoped to accomplish here. It's too small to do any real shopping, too inconvenient for getting just 1 or 2 items, and is in an area where the store lease must be sky high.
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Re: 365 by Whole Foods to close at Bellevue Square

Post by marshd1000 »

It also wasn't terribly far from the existing full scale Bellevue Whole Foods. 365 was nice but I was underwhelmed! But I am excited that they revived the full scale West Seattle store project!
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Re: 365 by Whole Foods to close at Bellevue Square

Post by storewanderer »

It does not look very good to close a high profile store like this, especially one that is so new. It is probably indicative of poor decisions being made by Whole Foods in recent years more than anything else. Poor decisions because Whole Foods kept listing to what stock market analysts were telling them to do. At least Amazon determined when to say when on this one...
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Re: 365 by Whole Foods to close at Bellevue Square

Post by Brian Lutz »

http://downtownbellevue.com/2017/12/07/ ... -by-judge/

It looks like Whole Foods may be forced to reopen this store. Kemper Freeman (The owner of Bellevue Square) has sued Whole Foods to enforce the terms of the lease and has gotten a judge to rule that they must reopen the store within 14 days and continue to operate it.
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Re: 365 by Whole Foods to close at Bellevue Square

Post by SamSpade »

King County Superior Court Judge Mary E. Roberts on Thursday gave Whole Foods 14 days to reopen and work "in good faith" with Bellevue Square to fulfill its "operating covenant," which includes conducting business without interruption for 10 years.

Whole Foods had argued that reopening the store would be inappropriate., given that the store had been losing money from the beginning, and reopening would cost "millions of dollars."
So... cash settlement?(LOL)
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Re: 365 by Whole Foods to close at Bellevue Square

Post by pseudo3d »

SamSpade wrote: December 7th, 2017, 5:27 pm
King County Superior Court Judge Mary E. Roberts on Thursday gave Whole Foods 14 days to reopen and work "in good faith" with Bellevue Square to fulfill its "operating covenant," which includes conducting business without interruption for 10 years.

Whole Foods had argued that reopening the store would be inappropriate., given that the store had been losing money from the beginning, and reopening would cost "millions of dollars."
So... cash settlement?(LOL)
Now that Whole Foods has Amazon to cover for it, just paying them off is a realistic approach.

Speaking of realism, I'm surprised Amazon hasn't decided to close more Whole Foods stores in areas that I doubt are really working (like Detroit).
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Re: 365 by Whole Foods to close at Bellevue Square

Post by klkla »

pseudo3d wrote: December 8th, 2017, 7:16 am Speaking of realism, I'm surprised Amazon hasn't decided to close more Whole Foods stores in areas that I doubt are really working (like Detroit).
Why do you assume that Detroit isn't working?
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Re: 365 by Whole Foods to close at Bellevue Square

Post by lola42 »

SamSpade wrote: December 7th, 2017, 5:27 pm
King County Superior Court Judge Mary E. Roberts on Thursday gave Whole Foods 14 days to reopen and work "in good faith" with Bellevue Square to fulfill its "operating covenant," which includes conducting business without interruption for 10 years.

Whole Foods had argued that reopening the store would be inappropriate., given that the store had been losing money from the beginning, and reopening would cost "millions of dollars."
So... cash settlement?(LOL)
Yep, SamSpade, I think a mighty large cash settlement is in Amazon's future. Along with a painful lesson on operating covenants. I haven't seen an anchor agree to one of those in years. Either Whole Foods desperately wanted the site or their lease negotiator didn't know what they were doing.
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Re: 365 by Whole Foods to close at Bellevue Square

Post by storewanderer »

This 365 Store in Bellevue must have been a real dog for Amazon to close it. Maybe some Amazon executives did not like what they saw in that store so they decided to close the place.

Meanwhile other stores such as Detroit are not as under the microscope so they can continue on.

I can't imagine it did any worse than, say, the Whole Foods in Wichita, KS, which I suspect is one of the lowest volume stores in the chain.
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Re: 365 by Whole Foods to close at Bellevue Square

Post by pseudo3d »

klkla wrote: December 8th, 2017, 2:27 pm
pseudo3d wrote: December 8th, 2017, 7:16 am Speaking of realism, I'm surprised Amazon hasn't decided to close more Whole Foods stores in areas that I doubt are really working (like Detroit).
Why do you assume that Detroit isn't working?
Wrong demographics for Whole Foods and highly scrutinized by Wall Street when it opened in 2013. The whole city, despite even the "nice" parts is basically a no-go zone for chain grocers (except Save-a-Lot), as the last Kroger in the city closed when it was losing money hand over fist, the Meijer in Detroit is on the very edge of the city and faces the wrong way, and I don't think there are even any Walmarts in Detroit proper either. Reading about it makes it sound like it was more for "community involvement" rather than a profit-making center (we all know that sometimes chains kept stores that lost money open to maintain market share...Kmart did, and I think that pre-LLC Albertsons did too). But since I don't have access to internal sales reports, there's no way to tell for sure.
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