99 Ranch in Aliso Viejo former Lowe's

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ClownLoach
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99 Ranch in Aliso Viejo former Lowe's

Post by ClownLoach »

The landlord for the long vacant Lowe's in Aliso Viejo shows they are going to enclose the garden center and make it a 99 Ranch store. Doesn't name any other tenants going in between there and the Michaels at the far end. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to have two "endcaps" (Michaels/99) with nothing between them all trying to share the same unloading area (I have firsthand experience here - it is a really bad setup)
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Re: 99 Ranch in Aliso Viejo former Lowe's

Post by Bagels »

Bring back Super K-Mart!

I'm surprised by 99 Rach's large expansion. The surrounding area is still predominately white, and second-generation Asian Americans usually shun traditional Asian supermarkets for more classic American...
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Re: 99 Ranch in Aliso Viejo former Lowe's

Post by ClownLoach »

Bagels wrote: May 18th, 2022, 11:35 am Bring back Super K-Mart!

I'm surprised by 99 Rach's large expansion. The surrounding area is still predominately white, and second-generation Asian Americans usually shun traditional Asian supermarkets for more classic American...
I'm surprised that Trader Joe's didn't have a lease restriction in place to prevent a grocery tenant in that part of the center. There are only going to be three skinny rows of parking on the side where the store is going, and to get in you'll have to drive up the steep ramp off a 50 mph street then quickly stop at the top of the ramp and make a greater than 90 degree right turn. I'm not an engineer, but I can't imagine how this isn't going to create a traffic and accident nightmare.

This landlord is desperate. They bought the site and paid Lowes to go away after they had just remodeled the store into a "smart home exhibition" flagship for the chain, and thought Michaels was moving that store down to the former Sports Authority off Oso and I-5 (they were actually moving their dilapidated old store off La Paz) then were completely shocked when they renewed their lease as they had another decade plus of term. So they thought they would have an empty, easy to develop building on their hands and that the community would go along with it.

The landlord wanted to build a 7 story high condo complex and a high rise hotel on the property. Hundreds of residents stormed the meetings at City Hall as well as separate meetings the developer set up in a fancy hotel ballroom with free drinks and food. The residents refused to allow any kind of residential development here. Aliso Viejo is another city that will likely get into a big fight with the state over developing more housing. Basically the argument is that the residents paid premium prices over other surrounding cities knowing that they were buying a limited development community with permanent open space and schools that would not be overcrowded under the master plan. This giant condo complex would have added tens of thousands of residents and offered absolutely zero support for additional schools or other resources. So it was shot down, and literally no major national retail chain was available for this space as they all have stores within a mile radius on Alicia, or La Paz, or Aliso Creek.

This is probably how they wound up with 99 Ranch. It will fail spectacularly here. Ultimately they are going to need to tear down this building because Super K-Mart was built in a rather stupid manner with hundreds of parking spaces behind the store; they probably mandated employees to park back there at the time. Now it leaves the front and side parking lots overcrowded. During Christmas season with Trader Joe's, Lowes and Michaels all cranking it was complete chaos in that parking lot.
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Re: 99 Ranch in Aliso Viejo former Lowe's

Post by storewanderer »

99 Ranch will try to run a more rounded store and see what categories work. They won't do a Chinese-only focus on a store in an area with a very mixed population. They opened in Folsom, CA in a sliver of a former Ralphs and have done better than I expected them to do. The store is sort of an "all Asian categories" type of place but there has been some movement in which specific country's imports they focus on. I don't think the store is real high volume but it is only about 20k square feet and doesn't need to do much volume with such a small footprint.

The Super Kmart in Aliso Viejo wasn't a bad performer by Super Kmart standards; it ran close to $1 million a week which was above average for a Super Kmart. I suspect the odd parking lot in the back was to make up for the oddly shaped front parking lot specifically on the end of the grocery side (opposite garden side). Not sure who would have parked back there or why. Safety issue for employees coming and going at early/late hours and a miserable walk to get in unless they'd allow entry/exit via loading dock.

It is also possible the lot with the Trader Joe's is not under the same ownership as the former Kmart building. Initially Kmart would develop the entire parcel then start selling the outlots to other users.
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