rwsandiego wrote:storewanderer wrote:...Why would, "as a condition of the sale" these other stores need to be closed? Probably because the sale is to a competitor who already has stores nearby these stores... ...
That would be my guess and I'm also guessing that the buyer of the Indiana locations is Albertsons. It would extend Jewel's reach into a contiguous market (Northern Indiana), just as they have done with Acme and its acquisitions.
So from reading articles, I found the nine Ultra Foods stores closing. There was an article—unfortunately I lost it but it said that the buyer didn’t want them. Going under the assumption that it’s Albertsons (and there is rather strong evidence to support that), here are the ones to close 6/18. It also didn’t say if Albertsons was buying the empty stores either, which is a good thing so that possibly they could reopen as other stores, then again, there’s probably some clause that if Central Co-Op kept them, then they’d be contractually required to not have grocery stores in them for a period of time. Maybe.
1590 N Larkin Avenue Joliet, IL 60435 – Jewel-Osco literally across the street
501 S County Farm Rd, Wheaton, IL 60187 – Four Jewel-Osco stores within a four mile radius in every direction
16831 Torrence Ave, Lansing, IL 60438 – Closest Jewel-Osco is about 2.3 miles away to the northwest (as the crow flies).
571 West 14th Place, Chicago Heights, IL – Closest Jewel-Osco is about 2.6 miles southeast
7520 W Roosevelt Rd, Forest Park, IL – Jewel-Osco is a little more than half a mile away down the street
6010 West Ridge Road, Gary, IN – Closest Jewel-Osco is 6 miles away, but this looks in a pretty rough area not really cut out for commercial.
9111 Taft Street, Merrillville, IN – Jewel-Osco is about 1 and a half miles away.
13180 South Cicero Avenue, Crestwood, IL – Jewel-Osco about two miles away. There’s another Jewel-Osco close to that one; this location was a former Omni/Dominick’s. There’s additional Jewel-Osco stores about 3.3 miles to the south and to the west.
13001 S Ashland Ave Calumet Park, IL 60827 – Jewel-Osco 1.3 miles away.
The farthest Jewel-Osco goes out today is Chesterton, IN beyond three in West Indiana, and the purchase of S&VT allows them to double down in West Indiana as well as make the Chesterton store less lonely, as there will be a Portage store (Town & Country Market) and two in Valparaiso. Of course, until 2012, Jewel was located in Michigan City, IN. I am a bit surprised about this, really. Not the fact that Albertsons is buying independents but the fact that Jewel just doesn’t seem to expand much. Sure, it’s got a good market share in Chicago and the suburbs surrounding it, but like Randalls and Tom Thumb, never really "got it" in markets that were poorer or smaller where it was used to, even before Safeway. Looking at a map of the stores Albertsons owns, the West Coast (except for Utah) gets an even spread as well as the Northeast, but Jewel-Osco clusters around Chicagoland and almost nowhere else, Randalls in Houston and Austin, and Albertsons/Tom Thumb in Dallas.
It would be a mistake to try to operate all the newly-acquired stores out of Chicago despite not being far distance-wise. The Indiana stores need to have their own "group" that operates stores a little differently beyond the Chicago stores, or else they will suffer.