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.