Albertsons/Safeway 2018 & 2019: Openings and Closings

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Re: Albertsons/Safeway 2018: Openings and Closings

Post by rwsandiego »

Phoenix Business Journal reports that a new Safeway-anchored retail center has been proposed for the intersection of Point Twenty Two Blvd and Signal Butte Rd in Mesa. There is pretty much no retail out there, so I doubt this will be a replacement. Will be interesting to see 1) whether it gets built and 2) what it looks like if it does.
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Re: Albertsons/Safeway 2018: Openings and Closings

Post by storewanderer »

Another new Safeway is slated to open in San Jose in 2020 as part of a new BART Station there.

I sure hope they have better luck with this store than they are having with the store near a BART Station in Pittsburg (Bay Point), CA full of locked up products, long lines, and lousy conditions/execution.
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Re: Albertsons/Safeway 2018: Openings and Closings

Post by arizonaguy »

rwsandiego wrote: July 19th, 2018, 6:09 pm Phoenix Business Journal reports that a new Safeway-anchored retail center has been proposed for the intersection of Point Twenty Two Blvd and Signal Butte Rd in Mesa. There is pretty much no retail out there, so I doubt this will be a replacement. Will be interesting to see 1) whether it gets built and 2) what it looks like if it does.
The closest supermarkets to this location are an Albertsons and a Safeway at the intersection of Baseline Rd and Ellsworth Rd (about 5 miles away from this site). It is possible that this store opens as a "replacement" for whichever store (the Albertsons or the Safeway) that they plan to close at that intersection.

I have to applaud Safeway for at least showing signs of life in the Phoenix market (and Tucson). Yes, they've closed some stores but there really haven't been any "surprise" closings. The stores that have closed just could not be priced competitively for their surrounding neighborhoods.
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Re: Albertsons/Safeway 2018: Openings and Closings

Post by storewanderer »

I think in Arizona they are taking major advantage of Kroger's current lack of wanting to build new stores at the current time.

The biggest risk I see is when the areas develop further and when Kroger stops pissing money away at technology initiatives and decides to go back to building stores again. They can go build across the street from these new Safeways and the result will not be good for Safeway.
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Re: Albertsons/Safeway 2018: Openings and Closings

Post by arizonaguy »

storewanderer wrote: July 19th, 2018, 9:33 pm I think in Arizona they are taking major advantage of Kroger's current lack of wanting to build new stores at the current time.

The biggest risk I see is when the areas develop further and when Kroger stops pissing money away at technology initiatives and decides to go back to building stores again. They can go build across the street from these new Safeways and the result will not be good for Safeway.
The good news for Safeway is that it's not just Kroger. Walmart also seems to have an aversion to building stores at the current time (and seems to be more focused on cutting its real estate footprint than even Kroger is).

Safeway currently is the only player in a lot of more "exurban" developments in the Phoenix area.
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Re: Albertsons/Safeway 2018: Openings and Closings

Post by storewanderer »

arizonaguy wrote: July 19th, 2018, 9:44 pm
storewanderer wrote: July 19th, 2018, 9:33 pm I think in Arizona they are taking major advantage of Kroger's current lack of wanting to build new stores at the current time.

The biggest risk I see is when the areas develop further and when Kroger stops pissing money away at technology initiatives and decides to go back to building stores again. They can go build across the street from these new Safeways and the result will not be good for Safeway.
The good news for Safeway is that it's not just Kroger. Walmart also seems to have an aversion to building stores at the current time (and seems to be more focused on cutting its real estate footprint than even Kroger is).

Safeway currently is the only player in a lot of more "exurban" developments in the Phoenix area.
Kroger is in good shape in Phoenix since they built so many stores the past few years. Plus they do have that one downtown Phoenix Store opening soon, I wonder if they have anything else under construction?

Hard to say what is happening at Wal Mart.

The interesting thing with Safeway is number of stores closed seems to exceed number of new stores opened. It is difficult to tell if that trend will continue (Safeway seems to be running extremely low volumes in various locations with Fry's at the same intersection or a block or two away but looks healthy when Fry's isn't quite that close). I think the Southwest Division tries to hold onto stores but I am not too impressed with its operations since Safeway was folded into it (I think the old Albertsons LLC Southwest ran stores with much more competitive pricing and much better perimeters before they got involved with Safeway).
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Re: Albertsons/Safeway 2018: Openings and Closings

Post by arizonaguy »

storewanderer wrote: July 19th, 2018, 10:01 pm
arizonaguy wrote: July 19th, 2018, 9:44 pm
storewanderer wrote: July 19th, 2018, 9:33 pm I think in Arizona they are taking major advantage of Kroger's current lack of wanting to build new stores at the current time.

The biggest risk I see is when the areas develop further and when Kroger stops pissing money away at technology initiatives and decides to go back to building stores again. They can go build across the street from these new Safeways and the result will not be good for Safeway.
The good news for Safeway is that it's not just Kroger. Walmart also seems to have an aversion to building stores at the current time (and seems to be more focused on cutting its real estate footprint than even Kroger is).

Safeway currently is the only player in a lot of more "exurban" developments in the Phoenix area.
Kroger is in good shape in Phoenix since they built so many stores the past few years. Plus they do have that one downtown Phoenix Store opening soon, I wonder if they have anything else under construction?

Hard to say what is happening at Wal Mart.

The interesting thing with Safeway is number of stores closed seems to exceed number of new stores opened. It is difficult to tell if that trend will continue (Safeway seems to be running extremely low volumes in various locations with Fry's at the same intersection or a block or two away but looks healthy when Fry's isn't quite that close). I think the Southwest Division tries to hold onto stores but I am not too impressed with its operations since Safeway was folded into it (I think the old Albertsons LLC Southwest ran stores with much more competitive pricing and much better perimeters before they got involved with Safeway).
Off the top of my head, the most recent Albertsons / Safeway closures in metro Phoenix have been as follows:

Safeway:

19th Ave. and Union Hills Rd., Phoenix (closed July 2012)
51st Ave. and Olive Ave., Glendale (closed summer 2014)
67th Ave. and Peoria Ave., Peoria (closed summer 2015)
Reems Rd. and Grand Ave., Surprise (closed summer 2017)
35th Ave. and Northern Ave., Phoenix (closed July 2018)
32nd St. and Thunderbird Rd., Phoenix (closing summer 2018)
59th Ave. and Thunderbird Rd., Phoenix (closing summer 2018)

Albertsons:

Tatum Blvd. and Greenway Rd., Phoenix (closed early 2014)
Scottsdale Rd. and Carefree Hwy., Phoenix (closed 2015 during sale to Haggen, never reopened)
59th Ave. and Beardsley Rd., Glendale (closed summer 2016)
Loop 303 and Bell Rd., Surprise (closed early 2017)
Loop 101 and Frank Lloyd Wright Blvd., Scottsdale (closed early 2017)
Tatum Blvd. and Shea Blvd., Phoenix (closed early 2018)

I'm not going to count the stores that went to Haggen and then were re-opened in this discussion as new openings. I also will not count the relocation of the Safeway at Tatum Blvd. and Greenway Rd. to the closed Albertsons across the street.

With the exception of the Reems Rd. and Grand Ave. Safeway store (which was closed as it was across the street from an Albertsons) all of the other recent Safeway closures have been 20 - 40 year old stores in neighborhoods that have experienced demographic shifts / economic declines since the stores were built.

The Albertsons closures, on the other hand, with the exception of the Tatum Blvd. and Shea Blvd. store, are all either across the street from or within 1 mile of a currently operating Safeway store.

One last note. 3 of the Safeway closures and 2 of the Albertsons closures (6 of 13 total) are across the street from currently operating Fry's stores.

At the time of the merger, Albertsons had good stores in good neighborhoods. Most of the "dog" stores in neighborhoods similar to the majority of the Safeway stores that closed were either closed prior to 2006 or were closed between 2006 - 2009 at the beginning of the LLC era.

Safeway still has some stores that I'd assume are on life support, but most of the remaining stores do at least moderate volume. I agree, the further away from a Fry's the better a Safeway tends to preform.
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Re: Albertsons/Safeway 2018: Openings and Closings

Post by bm11k »

As I mentioned on the Northwest Board, The Boise Broadway Store Re-Opens Tomorrow. found an article

https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/bus ... 35940.html

An Albertsons with a Bar, make me wonder if they are following the Kroger/Fred Meyer Approach
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Re: Albertsons/Safeway 2018: Openings and Closings

Post by rwsandiego »

bm11k wrote: July 20th, 2018, 7:54 pm As I mentioned on the Northwest Board, The Boise Broadway Store Re-Opens Tomorrow. found an article

https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/bus ... 35940.html

An Albertsons with a Bar, make me wonder if they are following the Kroger/Fred Meyer Approach
The "On the Rocks" is not new. Albertsons has been putting them in ACME and Jewel-Osco stores for a few years. The one at Clark and Division is really quite nice.

It is nice to see Albertsons experimenting with stores like this one. They have announced an "upscale" Safeway in the northwest Phoenix metro area (Surprise maybe?). Not sure whether it will be like this one or like a Pavilians. We shall see.
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Re: Albertsons/Safeway 2018: Openings and Closings

Post by Jeff »

a42887 wrote: June 18th, 2018, 2:06 am
storewanderer wrote: June 17th, 2018, 12:53 pm
a42887 wrote: June 17th, 2018, 1:55 am

It shares a parking lot with a Walmart that has a grocery section. Seems like the likely outcome, honestly.
How long has the Wal Mart Supercenter been there? Did it start as a regular Wal Mart and more recently convert to a Supercenter? Store appears to have had the Lucky interior in 2007 then remodeled (pretty good remodel too) by Supervalu.
From Google Maps, looks like less than 10 years, maybe less than 5. Building was maybe a Best Buy before Walmart moved in?
Not old at all. Building was Mervyns and Levitz Furniture. The lower level of the Mervyns is the food area, while the upper is general merchandise. There is an escalator between the two levels. It is a really cramped market area though. It opened November 2012.
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