Is Kroger eyeing Downtown site for new store?
Kroger acquired a piece of land on Elm Street in Downtown Cincinnati last week, records show.
Company officials declined to discuss the purchase, citing the company's pending financial results being released Thursday. The grocer has been long been pressed by interested neighborhood groups to develop a supermarket Downtown. Kroger executives themselves have publicly discussed such a potential project.
The quarter-acre site it has newly acquired has a vacant 65-year-old office building on it with parking lots surrounding it. It is located at 901 Elm St., across the street from Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy-Armleder campus.
The property was sold for $400,000, said CHCA spokeswoman Jennifer Murphy. CHCA owned the property since 2000 and it had been listed for sale for two years, she said.
The one-story Elm Street property was once the Communication Exchange, or ComEx, building. Through the 1960s and 1970s, the news and weather offices and WLW-AM radio were in the building and passers-by could see newscasts in progress through the glass windows, according to former Enquirer reporter John Kiesewetter. The Armleder campus, or Crosley Square, building across the street was the headquarters for the radio and television stations for several decades.
The building later housed the Legal Aid Society of Greater Cincinnati. CHCA bought the property from the Legal Aid Society.
Kroger currently has a small store on Vine Street in Over-the-Rhine. The newly acquired site is a couple blocks from the company's headquarters at East Court and Vine streets.
Hamilton County records say the office building on the new site is about the same size as the more than 12,000-square-foot Kroger store in Over-The-Rhine. The property's market value is listed at $600,000.
Downtown Cincinnati hasn't had a supermarket in more than 40 years. Downtown boosters see a supermarket as a key to continuing the neighborhood's population growth; coincidentally, lack of population is a reason that grocers have been reluctant to return Downtown.
Kroger's $800 million takeover of Milwaukee-based Roundy's Inc. in December may provide the grocer with the right vehicle to expand its supermarket presence Downtown and in urban settings nationwide.
In announcing the deal, Kroger executives made it clear that Roundy's Chicago-based Mariano's was the crown jewel of the acquisition. The prize: A 34-store chain steeped in an urban setting, commanding a loyal following.
Kroger executives openly discussed applying the Mariano's model in Cincinnati and elsewhere.
"It does open up possibilities for urban stores where we don't have them," chief financial officer Michael Schlotman told analysts in November.
He noted Downtown Cincinnati's rebirth has attracted new potential customers to the area that Kroger wants to capture.
"I look at a market like Cincinnati where the urban core is growing in a big way and the number of people moving back Downtown – we really don't have a store in the urban center that would be the kind of store the folks would want to shop in," Schlotman said.
Supermarket industry analysts have told The Enquirer that Kroger has presented a larger-than-life competitor to potential new entrants interested in opening a Downtown grocery store.
In addition to its 1420 Vine St. store in Over-the-Rhine, it has four stores (and one being rebuilt in Corryville) within three miles of Downtown.
Retailers from those at Findlay Market to restaurants and cafes to Walgreens and CVS also dot the landscape.
But that hasn’t stopped developers and property owners from proposing a slew of projects within the last few years.
The latest proposal involves the Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority (CHMA), which wants to work with private companies to create retail and grocery store space, office space and a parking garage at its former 16 W. Central Parkway headquarters in Over-the-Rhine.
Talks among CMHA and project developers Kingsley & Co. and Anchor Properties are continuing, according to CMHA general counsel Joy Gazaway.
Urban grocery store Epicurean Mercantile Co. is expected to open in September at 1818 Race St. in Over-the-Rhine, across the street from Findlay Market.
Property owners and development planners for 309 Vine St., The Banks, and Carew Tower have all disclosed an interest in landing a grocery store at their sites.
Then there’s the ill-fated plan to develop a grocery store at Fourth and Race streets as part of a project proposed by Flaherty & Collins Co.
The Indianapolis-based real estate developer proposed a $97 million project to add luxury apartments, new parking and a grocery store to replace the former Pogue’s garage. A new vision of the project, which now involves the Cincinnati Center City Development Corp., calls for developing 208 apartments, 25,000 square feet of commercial space and a new parking garage.
It’s not immediately clear when the existing city-owned garage will be demolished.