Just for the record, the closing Food 4 Less is an original Zody's. Not that we couldn't all tell it from the architecture.ClownLoach wrote: ↑February 1st, 2021, 10:53 pm I have a feeling for the Ralphs closing - this was a way to get out from under a marginal store that will be cannibalized by the new Amazon Fresh opening down the street. It is a very old and established neighborhood that used to have every brand in a short radius, Stater Bros, Albertsons, Pavilions, Fresh and Easy, and if you went further up the Los Coyotes Diagonal you hit the Towne Center with Walmart and Sam's. What is odd is that about 15 years ago they expanded and fully remodeled that store, adding about 10K Sq ft to it. The neighborhood is established and reasonably high income. I'm willing to bet it is the kind of neighborhood where residents will protest the closure, so with the City passing the "hero pay" initiative they got a built in excuse to close and someone else to point at (instead of the competition).
As far as the store out on Carson goes, that was a redevelopment deal of a former Pacific Theaters drive in I believe. Those redevelopment deals died out after Gov. Brown shut down Redevelopment Agencies. Almost all of the retail centers built or remodeled in the late 90s/early 00's in Long Beach were from these agencies and locked in below market rent for decades to encourage businesses to move there. The only reason a store wouldn't make money at such bargain basement rents would be if shrink was too high. This is the same reason they kept the problematic Marina location on PCH open instead of the 7th St one - long term low rent made it cheaper to close the higher volume store (now a Target express) and try to train the customers to find the other location.
The $4 "Hero Pay" doesn't affect Walmart or Target. This is quite unfair, selective which is being argued as part of the federal court case against Long Beach. See Los Angeles Times article below.
The timing to close these stores could be argued to head off today's Los Angeles City Council vote for their similar "Hero Pay" proposal of $5 per hour.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/kroge ... r-BB1diymF