Second Albertsons Opens Doors In Cda

Yet another supermarket is trying to bag the Kootenai County market.

Albertson’s Inc. of Boise opened its second store in the Coeur d’Alene area on Wednesday.

Located on the corner of Prairie and U.S. Highway 95, the 51,000-square-foot grocery store, with a U.S. Bank branch, will draw from the Dalton Gardens and Hayden Lake area, according to store manager Brad Rudolph.

“We realized it’s a competitive market, but we’re up to the challenge,” he said.

The Albertsons expansion comes on the heels of the opening of Fred Meyer’s 157,000-square-foot store this spring and Safeway’s opening last fall north of Interstate 90.

The $6 million Albertsons project will share customers with its Coeur d’Alene store on Ironwood, said Mike Withers, district manager for Albertson’s.

“We looked at this area for years,” Withers said.

With the growing population and the ever-increasing numbers of grocery chains lining Highway 95, Albertson’s wanted to capture a share of the north Coeur d’Alene market.

The store has 120 employees. Albertson’s has eight other stores in the Spokane area.

Albertson’s has 846 stores across the United States mostly in the West, South and Midwest. Company sales last year totaled $13.8 billion.

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