San Francisco Business Times
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Friday, September 14, 2007
Supermarket shops region for more sites
Tesco rolls out Fresh & Easy
by Sarah Duxbury and J.K. Dineen
Tesco is cooking up a British invasion of the Bay Area grocery industry.
Europe's supermarket kingpin broke ground Dec. 13 on its first Northern California store in San Francisco's Bayview. While that store will not be open until 2009, the move into one of San Francisco's underserved neighborhoods signaled that the British retailer is serious about its goal of serving every neighborhood in California. In addition to the Bayview property, Fresh & Easy is closing in on deals in Fairfield, Pacifica, Danville, and in the Willow Glen neighborhood in San Jose.
Brokers and developers say the company is blanketing San Francisco neighborhoods, chasing deals at new developments years away from completion as well as at vacant spaces ready to go. Sources say Fresh & Easy is pursuing markets at the Prado Group's mixed-use project at the former Cala Foods site at Hyde and California streets, AvalonBay's 175-unit apartment development at 1150 Ocean Ave., and is talking to an affordable housing developer about putting a store in the Tenderloin.
"If there is an area in which they are not looking, I haven't heard about it," said Matt Holmes, president of Retail West and a partner in the Pacifica project Fresh & Easy has signed on. "They have engaged everybody. They are like wildfire."
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