Walmart purchases former Mervyn's in South San Diego

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Walmart purchases former Mervyn's in South San Diego

Post by submariner »

Walmart has acquired the former Mervyn's location at 575 Saturn Blvd. in San Diego, CA in the Southland Plaza at the intersection of the 5 freeway and Palm Ave (CA-75) in the South San Diego area.

The store, Built in 1983 is 75,271 square feet. The shopping center's other anchors include a Home Depot, Vons, Big 5 Sporting Goods and CVS/pharmacy (formerly Sav•On).

Walmart plans on opening the store in Fall 2012, which indicates that the existing structure will be used. Walmart Supercenters typically average 98-261,000 square feet, meaning this location will likely be a standard Walmart.

Interestingly, the building featured a courtyard and some other shops attached to the west of the building, but were demolished in an expansion of the current Home Depot around 2000. The previous tenant of the Home Depot store is unknown at this time, but historic aerials indicate a similar, smaller warehouse store with a garden center.

Areial Views (© Google, Imagery date sometime in 2010-2011) :
South (main) Elevation:
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West Elevation:
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North Elevation:
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East Elevation:
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Ground Level Imagery (© Aaron Slater, 11 February 2012):
South Elevation:
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West Elevation:
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Southwest Elevation:
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Historic aerials shooing the Mervyn's (575 Saturn) location and Home Depot (525 Saturn) location. Note that Google Earth uses "19th Street" instead of Saturn Blvd. 19th Street is a former designation, unknown when or why it changed:

29 January 2000 (© Google Earth):
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05 June 2009 (© Google Earth):
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Bing Maps Image showing the store as Mervyns just before its closure in 2009:

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Re: Walmart purchases former Mervyn's in South San Diego

Post by Brian Lutz »

As noted in another thread, Walmart has also leased the former Mervyn's space at Factoria Mall in Bellevue WA with similar plans to turn it into a Walmart store. At 76,207sf, it's fairly similar in size to this one, although it's smaller than the 101,495sf Target store in the same mall (which itself is somewhat small compared to other nearby Targets.)
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Re: Walmart purchases former Mervyn's in South San Diego

Post by Super S »

It seems like these would more likely be the "neighborhood market" stores that Walmart is opening around the northwest than a standard Walmart. Walmart is aggressively expanding their grocery presence in the region.
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Re: Walmart purchases former Mervyn's in South San Diego

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Super S wrote:It seems like these would more likely be the "neighborhood market" stores that Walmart is opening around the northwest than a standard Walmart. Walmart is aggressively expanding their grocery presence in the region.
I'm not sure about Bellevue, but I'm 99% sure the one here in San Diego won't be a Neighborhood Market. Walmart hasn't expressed any plans to open the concept in San Diego, nor would it be smart to start a new concept to the area in a shopping center that already has a well-established grocery presence (Vons).
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Re: Walmart purchases former Mervyn's in South San Diego

Post by Super S »

submariner wrote:I'm not sure about Bellevue, but I'm 99% sure the one here in San Diego won't be a Neighborhood Market. Walmart hasn't expressed any plans to open the concept in San Diego, nor would it be smart to start a new concept to the area in a shopping center that already has a well-established grocery presence (Vons).
Maybe Walmart has changed how they are doing things, but I seem to remember reading somewhere that they are no longer building or opening traditional, non-supercenter stores, and opening either the Neighborhood Markets, or Supercenters only.

The northwest has a well-established grocery presence with Fred Meyer, Safeway, and to a lesser extent, Albertsons. WinCo actually competes head-to-head with Walmart for groceries (and often beats their pricing) but Walmart is planning quite a few of the Neighborhood Market stores anyway, and is converting most of their traditional stores to the Supercenter format. I would be surprised if Walmart opened a traditional store the way they are expanding their grocery presence, unless they are planning something like the Target P-Fresh concept.
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Re: Walmart purchases former Mervyn's in South San Diego

Post by Alpha8472 »

Walmart has already been adding small grocery sections to their regular non-supercenter stores.

It is very similar to PFresh, however the produce and fruit selection is much more limited. Instead, the grocery section focuses more on packaged baked goods such as breads, donuts, cupcakes, cakes, mini-pies, etc. There are several aisles of refrigerated food just like PFresh.

I would say that the Target PFresh concept is much better. It features salads, prepared meals, fresh meat, etc. while Walmart doesn't have salads. The packaged meat at Walmart is limited to bologna and lunch meats while Target actually has real fresh meat such as ground beef.
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Re: Walmart purchases former Mervyn's in South San Diego

Post by submariner »

Alpha8472 wrote:Walmart has already been adding small grocery sections to their regular non-supercenter stores.

It is very similar to PFresh, however the produce and fruit selection is much more limited. Instead, the grocery section focuses more on packaged baked goods such as breads, donuts, cupcakes, cakes, mini-pies, etc. There are several aisles of refrigerated food just like PFresh.
Sounds much more like the "pantry" concept had with "Big K" stores back in the late 90s.

I actually decided to see what it was like to go grocery shopping at a PFresh Target yesterday. I was impressed with the general selection, but of course it lacked the much broader selection of a grocery store. I found a small amount of pre-made ready-to-cook meals, but nowhere near the selection you can find at say, Fresh & Easy. Target would be good for quick trips for most anything with the exception of meats and produce (obviously).
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Re: Walmart purchases former Mervyn's in South San Diego

Post by Brian Lutz »

In the case of the Bellevue store, I'm pretty sure this one's intended to be a general merchandise store rather than a Neighborhood Market because they're also opening a (somewhat smaller, at about 60,000sf) Neighborhood Market a couple of miles away in part of what used to be the Bellevue Kmart store.
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Re: Walmart purchases former Mervyn's in South San Diego

Post by submariner »

The contractor signs have gone up, the
glass on the east and west elevations have come down, and the gutting has begun.
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Re: Walmart purchases former Mervyn's in South San Diego

Post by submariner »

A side note... I found a scan or the receipt from my visit in November 2008. I bought a welcome mat and some bath towels for my new condo. The store closed in the beginning of 2009.
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