Albertsons is planning to close a dozen Safeway supermarkets in early November, according to regulatory notices and local news reports.
The list encompasses 10 locations in Colorado — including four in the Denver area — and one each in Nebraska and New Mexico, CBS Colorado reported. All of the supermarkets are slated to close by Nov. 7.
More than 600 workers are assigned to the Colorado stores that are going out of business, according to Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notices. The grocer said in the notices, dated Sept. 9, that it hopes to transfer an unspecified number of the affected employees to other stores after they cease operations, adding that it has not yet determined which workers will be offered new roles.
According to CBS Colorado, Albertsons is shuttering the stores in connection with the chain’s decision earlier this year to consolidate its Intermountain and Denver divisions under a new unit known as the Mountain West Division. The stores’ performance also played a role in the grocer’s decision to close them, the TV station reported.
Albertsons did not respond by publication time to a request for information about the closures.
Most of the stores set to close were included among the nearly 600 supermarkets Albertsons and Kroger intended to divest to C&S Wholesale Grocers in order to win government approval for their ultimately unsuccessful merger effort. They include eight Safeway locations — seven in Colorado and one in New Mexico.
Albertsons has implemented a host of adjustments, including executive changes and corporate job cuts, as it has worked to strengthen its operations in the wake of the failed transaction with Kroger.
Albertsons currently runs more than 900 Safeway locations, which comprise more than a third of the grocer’s total fleet of over 2,200 stores in 35 states.
In a statement on Facebook, Mayor Kirk Crespin of Lamar, Colorado, which is set to lose its only Safeway location, said he was optimistic that another food store will replace the one that is closing.
“While this is a significant loss, Lamar is a resilient and strong community. We will continue working closely with our economic development partners to recruit new businesses — especially one that can provide similar goods and services to meet the needs of our residents,” Crespin wrote in the social media post.
