After several weeks of rumor and rife speculation, contractor's bid documents confirm that Walmart is building a grocery store in Altadena
by Timothy Rutt
The whispering has been going on ever since construction started earlier this year at the vacant, dilapidated supermarket site at the corner of Lincoln Avenue and Figueroa Drive: what's going to go in there?
Biggest rumor: Walmart, which had announced it was going to open a series of Neighborhood Markets, its smaller, supermarket format, in the greater Los Angeles area. Was the Altadena site going to be one of them? Walmart wasn't saying; the property owner's representative wasn't saying. Even though AOL heard that Walmart had contacted the county about conducting an opening ceremony in Altadena, nobody was committing to say that the Arkansas-based chain was planning to put a supermarket at 2408 Lincoln Ave.
This week, Gray-ICE Builders, a retail facility construction firm in Anaheim, put out a request to contractors to submit bids for jobs at the Lincoln Avenue site. Operating through the building and construction site thebluebook.com, Gray-ICE's web page on the project is headlined "Wal-Mart NM Altadena" (as in "Walmart Neighborhood Market Altadena.") The scope of work, according to the website: "Take over of existing vacant building to Wal-Mart Market."
According to the plans, the 28,200 square foot site will have refrigerated and cooler areas, the kind needed for a good-sized supermarket. There are also plans for an onsite pharmacy in the documents. Parking for 113 vehicles is included.
Some of the individual plans -- such as the erosion control plan, which we have screen-captured a segment of -- also prominently portray it as a Walmart project.
The Altadena Neighborhood Market would actually be small for such a store: Walmart's corporate website says that the markets average 42,000 feet. There are about 187 Neighborhood Markets in operation around the country.
Currently, Walmart has announced plans to open a Neighborhood Market in Panorama City by the end of the year, and in the Chinatown area of downtown Los Angeles in early 2013.
NOTE: We are closing down comments early and consolidating everything in daily Walmart threads. Saturday's is here.
