Carlsbad Gateway S&F to be Replaced with 5 Story Apartment Complex

[ClownLoach]

The classic little store that has been through several transactions in Carlsbad Village will likely have a date with the bulldozer as developers embrace the recent reports that Carlsbad has the fastest increasing housing costs in San Diego County. It has been an Albertsons but wound up in the hands of Smart and Final after being divested to Haggen. Article says it was originally a Big Bear. (Someone had asked me once what the history was and I had no idea, thought it was a old classic Lucky)

Who needs to buy food, or see the ocean from I-5 anyway when we can build 5 story apartments? (With a height exception because some will supposedly be "affordable") Since they've already allowed a ugly monolithic apartment complex to go up on the other side of the street I'm sure this will be approved. Lots of beautiful, quaint little shops and restaurants in this community. Great financial opportunity for developers to tear it all down and destroy the character of the community since they can get top rents being so close to the ocean.

There's probably a pay wall...

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/co ... ds-village

[Bagels]

Seems as if many of the ex-Haggen stores acquired by Smart & Final are closing. I'm pondering if this was a S&F or landlord decision?

[storewanderer]

We are coming up on the 10 year mark.

I was really hoping a lot of these would just revert back to full service grocery stores. I do think many of them still have the opportunity/potential to be full service grocery stores again.

[Bagels]

I'm curious as to the fate of the ex-Haggen stores. The Haggen website had a PDF of the stores that it had acquired. I bookmarked it and occasionally used it for reference for conversation on this forum, but unfortunately it's been taken down recently and I can't find a clean list of stores.

[retailfanmitchell019]

Carlsbad/Oceanside/Vista being my home turf, I am not surprised that they are targeting this Smart & Final for re-development.
This store is located in Carlsbad's "Barrio" neighborhood (bordered by Carlsbad Village Dr to the north, Tamarack Ave to the south, I-5 to the east, and the train tracks to the west), which was originally settled by Mexican-Americans during the Great Depression, but is steadily being gentrified, is now a mixture of White and Hispanic (rents are being raised, many of the people renting are snowbirds from the PNW/Western Canada every winter. Year-round renters are well-off transplants from other places).
I'm hoping SpinCo, Ralphs, or Stater can put a store in the development.
Extending the trade area, 92008 is a zip code with an affluent, educated population. Smart & Final is not a great fit for this place.

This store is definitely a former Big Bear (might've been a Mayfair until the mid-60s). Albertsons bough this store in 1994, along with Big Bear stores in Del Mar, La Jolla, and San Ysidro. Big Bear was a local San Diego County supermarket chain with 20 stores at its peak, owned by John Mabee, a horse racer and 20% owner of the Chargers. They were not related to the Ohio chain. In 1994, Mabee sold the remains of Big Bear to Fleming and Albertsons (who bought 4 stores, including Carlsbad).

This store was the reason the Lucky over in Pacific Coast Plaza (O'side) was sold to Stater Bros. As storewanderer noted in another thread, this store got a high-end version of the Broadway (Larry) interior in a remodel, similar to this store:
Albertsons did well with this store (business coming from I-5 traffic coupled with tourist trade). This wasn't a store meant for weekly grocery shopping. Divesting this store to Haggen was a mistake (quite frankly divesting everything in SoCal to Haggen was a mistake).

Before I did research a few years ago, I honestly thought this store was a former Alpha Beta.

[ClownLoach]

Carlsbad/Oceanside/Vista being my home turf, I am not surprised that they are targeting this Smart & Final for re-development.
This store is located in Carlsbad's "Barrio" neighborhood (bordered by Carlsbad Village Dr to the north, Tamarack Ave to the south, I-5 to the east, and the train tracks to the west), which was originally settled by Mexican-Americans during the Great Depression, but is steadily being gentrified, is now a mixture of White and Hispanic (rents are being raised, many of the people renting are snowbirds from the PNW/Western Canada every winter. Year-round renters are well-off transplants from other places).
I'm hoping SpinCo, Ralphs, or Stater can put a store in the development.
Extending the trade area, 92008 is a zip code with an affluent, educated population. Smart & Final is not a great fit for this place.

This store is definitely a former Big Bear (might've been a Mayfair until the mid-60s). Albertsons bough this store in 1994, along with Big Bear stores in Del Mar, La Jolla, and San Ysidro. Big Bear was a local San Diego County supermarket chain with 20 stores at its peak, owned by John Mabee, a horse racer and 20% owner of the Chargers. They were not related to the Ohio chain. In 1994, Mabee sold the remains of Big Bear to Fleming and Albertsons (who bought 4 stores, including Carlsbad).

This store was the reason the Lucky over in Pacific Coast Plaza (O'side) was sold to Stater Bros. As storewanderer noted in another thread, this store got a high-end version of the Broadway (Larry) interior in a remodel, similar to this store:
Albertsons did well with this store (business coming from I-5 traffic coupled with tourist trade). This wasn't a store meant for weekly grocery shopping. Divesting this store to Haggen was a mistake (quite frankly divesting everything in SoCal to Haggen was a mistake).

Before I did research a few years ago, I honestly thought this store was a former Alpha Beta.

All of these retail conversion to mixed use developments put in a couple of small retail suites as a token commercial business. There won't be a supermarket here because it's more profitable to max out the residential, with minimal parking underground and the narrowest possible spaces. They can charge 15-25X more per square foot which is why these developers are all looking at shopping centers at all levels of performance and plotting to demolish them. Even when they have to pay the full price to sever the lease of a top performing store they'll still make a fat profit. They'll probably put a Starbucks or (insert crappy chain restaurant here) on the corner so they can get away with calling it mixed use, but certainly not a supermarket.

[Alpha8472]

In the San Francisco Bay Area some of these condominiums or housing projects have failed. Many are empty. The Nob Hill Foods in San Ramon, California was supposed to be demolished but it still stands. A new Sports Clips opened up in the building.

[storewanderer]

There is a Nob Hill in Santa Clara in one of these mixed use developments. That is a really dead store. It has some surface level parking even.

Also I think the Safeway that closed in downtown San Jose was part of one of these mixed use developments and had garage parking.

Ask people who live nearby (not in the mixed use development) why they don't shop at these stores and you hear the same thing- parking. Some think there is no parking. Some think there is a parking fee. Some say it takes too long to walk from the store to where the parking is (no different than any other store).

If the area is busy/dense enough that parking does not matter and there is enough foot traffic or mass transit traffic to support the store (as seen in various major cities back east), it is different. But these mixed use developments out west seem to have issues due to density not being deep enough. Ralphs does seem to work in downtown San Diego and downtown Los Angeles though. But not far from Ralphs in downtown San Diego is an Albertsons that really performed poorly in its initial years (seems to do better lately). Those two San Diego Stores have open garages for store customers (no validation needed). I forget the garage arrangement in Los Angeles.

[steps]

There is a Nob Hill in Santa Clara in one of these mixed use developments. That is a really dead store. It has some surface level parking even.

Also I think the Safeway that closed in downtown San Jose was part of one of these mixed use developments and had garage parking.

Ask people who live nearby (not in the mixed use development) why they don't shop at these stores and you hear the same thing- parking. Some think there is no parking. Some think there is a parking fee. Some say it takes too long to walk from the store to where the parking is (no different than any other store).

If the area is busy/dense enough that parking does not matter and there is enough foot traffic or mass transit traffic to support the store (as seen in various major cities back east), it is different. But these mixed use developments out west seem to have issues due to density not being deep enough. Ralphs does seem to work in downtown San Diego and downtown Los Angeles though. But not far from Ralphs in downtown San Diego is an Albertsons that really performed poorly in its initial years (seems to do better lately). Those two San Diego Stores have open garages for store customers (no validation needed). I forget the garage arrangement in Los Angeles.

DTLA Ralphs (if it hasn't changed recently) is self validation. There is a machine at the front of the store you run your ticket through. It's not watched so you could easily park in the garage, go to some other place near by then go up to Ralphs and validate your ticket.

That Ralphs is very busy but has/had a lot of shrink. Hard liquor is locked up, HABA is now in an enclosed area where you have to pay first. I tried to get a $3 tube of tooth paste but was told I had to pay there, didn't bother. No telling how much in lost sales they are having from that. Shampoo, mouth wash, toothbrushes, etc all in the area. Seems like a mistake to have such low priced item locked up but there is high theft there even with armed security.

[ClownLoach]

The issue with parking garages is that there is a perception of safety, whether it's valid or not. Even in onetime "America's Safest City" Irvine the Spectrum Target has struggled to get customers to use the parking garage, and you'll see cars circling and circling the very few outside aisles for a parking space. It's illogical as the garage is well lit and perfectly safe. My last company real estate team said that they estimate parking garage locations, even if free, to be 40% less productive unless it is a deeply urban environment like NYC.