A spokesperson for Safeway-Albertsons confirmed in an email to the Baker City Herald on Monday, March 31, that the Baker City Safeway store will close “on or before” May 25.

“Like all retailers, we are constantly evaluating the performance of our stores,” company representative Jill McGinnis wrote in the email. “Closing an underperforming store is always a tough decision, but we are focused on growing our business by being the favorite local supermarket, and running great stores where people love to shop. That’s what will enable us to offer the products and services our customers value most in this market.”

McGinnis wrote that “it is still premature to speculate what type of business may open in this location.”

Baker City Manager Barry Murphy said the city received a letter from the corporation late last week about the pending closure of the Safeway store.

Murphy said city officials and city councilors “will definitely be having a full discussion” about the store closure and its ramifications.

“That’s a significant thing for us,” Murphy said on Monday morning, April 1. “That’s a large building, and we would prefer that that doesn’t stay empty.”

Murphy said city officials will encourage developers to look at possible other uses for the building. He emphasized, though, that although the city can and will advocate for the community, private companies will decide the property’s future.

The current Safeway store, at 1205 Campbell, is 35,862 square feet and was built in 1977.

For the past nearly nine years, the company that owns both Safeway and Albertsons grocery chains has operated both a Safeway and an Albertsons store in Baker City. The Albertsons store, just across Campbell Street from Safeway, is 43,870 square feet and was built in 2001.

The Albertsons store operated as a Haggen grocery store starting in 2015, before closing.

Baker City’s experience with Safeway/Albertsons was something of a rollercoaster when the chains merged in 2014. Albertsons Companies Inc. is part of Cerberus Capital Management.

To satisfy federal regulators, after the merger the company sold more than 100 stores, including the Baker City Albertsons, which was bought by Haggen, which reopened the store, under that name, in May 2015.

But Haggen operated its Baker City store for just half a year or so.

In late June 2016 the Albertsons/Safeway company announced that it would reopen the former Haggen store, but as a Safeway, meaning there would be two Safeway stores within sight of each other.

But a month later the corporation reversed, saying the store would once again operate as an Albertsons, as it continues to do.

Baker City’s Grocery Outlet store opened in 2018.

Future use of the Safeway building

A potential concern is that the corporation that owns the Safeway building has a deed covenant that prevents another grocery chain from operating there, said lauren Ornelas, founder of the Food Empowerment Project, a nonprofit based in California.

Ornelas said the corporation that owns Albertsons and Safeway has employed such restrictions in other cities, including a 15-year block for a former Safeway store in Vallejo, California.

Ornelas said some cities, including Washington, D.C., have passed laws preventing such restrictions, although those can’t be done retroactively.

She urged Baker City elected officials, and residents, to “speak out” about the detrimental effects that a restriction could have. Those include access to Safeway’s products, including its pharmacy, as well as the possibility that the corporation would increase prices at its one remaining store, Albertsons, Ornelas said.

Kerry Savage, Baker County assessor, said on Thursday, April 3, that there were no such restrictions listed on property records for the Safeway store. However, Savage said the corporation could add such a covenant prior to selling or leasing the property.