babs wrote: ↑January 7th, 2018, 9:52 pm
The Beaverton location is not a strip mall. The only other tenant is an old restaurant that they could easily get removed.
The Oregon City location has a small strip mall off to the side, which is no different than the small strip malls next to many Walmarts that often have sandwich shops and Great Clips.
I stand corrected about Beaverton. You are correct. I was thrown off by the empty grocery space. One thing worth noting is that directly behind that Kmart is a huge former GM parts warehouse that shut down several years back which could be attractive, unless the nearby Carr Chevrolet (which opened while the warehouse was still open) is using this at all, which I am not sure. I could see a scenario where Walmart would want the store to face T.V. Highway and would want those adjacent parcels. The Beaverton location is becoming a bit run-down looking.
But Oregon City is definitely a strip mall, and could potentially pose issues for a conversion as the Albertsons and Kmart (opened in 1990) were built as two separate structures. The only difference though is that in that case the strip mall is physically attached. Most Walmarts have the strip malls on outparcels.
babs wrote: ↑January 7th, 2018, 9:04 pm
Here are two examples of why I don't think Walmart is interested.
Oregon City, OR
Vacant Kmart - about 90,000 sq ft with a vacant Albertsons next door, about 50,000 sq ft. Oregon City is a dream market for Walmart. No store nearby and demographics that are perfect for them. They even tried for years to locate a store nearby but couldn't due to community opposition. Here is an opportunity to combine two vacant buildings that share a common wall without having to get a zone change. Walmart hasn't made any movement to jump on this opportunity.
This is a market that is underrepresented by Walmart and always runs into opposition when trying to site one of their stores. It doesn't come any easier for them than this. Yet they seem to have no interest.
Um, that Albertsons isn't vacant. It was retained after they bought (and closed) the nearby Haggen. I agree it is interesting that the largest building in the center is unoccupied.
With as little business as that Albertsons was doing the multiple times I was there (back when Haggen was open), I too was not surprised when I read someone else say it was closed. That Albertsons had by far the least traffic of the stores in that area (Haggen, Safeway, Fred Meyer).
So it is still open? It hardly did any business. Maybe they are doing better now that they closed the Haggen...
$100M won't save the company. It can, however, break up the company and save parts, possibly, like selling what's left of Kmart to a dollar store company, or converting the remaining Sears into franchised operations.
pseudo3d wrote: ↑January 10th, 2018, 1:12 pm
$100M won't save the company. It can, however, break up the company and save parts, possibly, like selling what's left of Kmart to a dollar store company, or converting the remaining Sears into franchised operations.
Who could afford a mall rent to franchise a 200k s.f. store? And who is big enough to take over the rest of Kmart as is? I don't think either will happen. I think they just bought a few more months.
I haven't seen an official announcement, but I saw someone comment somewhere on Facebook that they got an additional $100million in financing today.
Somewhere, a banker is hoping his insurance is paid up. I have issues understanding how a business loses this much for this long and stays open.
Sooner or later, the money is going to run out. It almost makes more sense at this point to take all of the cash Sears Holdings has and spend it playing slot machines.
