Rosauers To Open U-City Store Decision Blocks Competitor’s Plans For New Supermarket At Shopping Center

Defending itself against a key competitor, Rosauers Supermarkets Wednesday announced a surprise move to block Albertson’s Inc. from erecting a new store at University City Mall in the Valley.

Spokane-based Rosauers, which operates 18 grocery and health food stores in Washington, Idaho, Montana and Oregon, will begin construction this summer on a $6 million, 50,000-square-foot supermarket at the east end of the mall.

The deal will return Rosauers to the same site it vacated in 1988 when it moved into the new 50,000-square-foot store on the other side of University Road. Company officials said the unusual action was a defensive move to keep Boise-based Albertson’s from opening a new store at the mall.

The new store will employ about 140 people. A supervisor at the existing U-City East store said employment there now totals about 100.

Mall officials touted Rosauers as the first of several tenants who will help revitalize the increasingly quiet shopping center, which has seen an exodus of retailers such as Lamont’s and Newberry’s. This summer J.C. Penney plans to move to the Spokane Valley Mall.

David Peterson, vice president of Goodale & Barbieri Cos., the mall’s developer and manager, said of the Rosauers announcement, “This is great news. We’re delighted that they have decided to come back to U-City.”

As recently as one month ago, Albertson’s was making plans to close its aging store at Pines and Sprague and open a new supermarket at U-City. The company last November had won a court battle with Rosauers to buy land at the mall to build a new store.

Albertson’s spokesman Mike Read said the company made an “independent decision based on factors in the marketplace. The new (Rosauers) development has taken place since that time.”

Peterson, with G&B, declined to elaborate on why the Albertson deal fell through.

John Magnuson, a Coeur d’Alene attorney and son of Harry Magnuson, president of the mall’s parent company, said the mall owners were in the enviable position of having two grocery store suitors.

“We were able to choose which one made the most economic sense to the future revitalization of U-City,” he said.

Rosauers plans to open the new store in early 1998, said President Larry Geller. The company will close the nine-year-old store across the street and attempt to sublease it to a non-grocer tenant.

“We were on that (mall) site for 45 years, so we figured we might as well go back,” Geller said. “Besides, somebody else could have been there.”

Peterson said the Rosauers project represents the first phase in redevelopment of a 500,000-square-foot mall that would serve thousands of shoppers passing by the center each day on Sprague and University.

Tenants will include restaurants, banks, a movie theater, drug store and others.

The project could become similar to Five Mile Shopping Center in North Spokane, where Rosauers is the anchor tenant among a collection of banks, restaurants, gas stations and other outlets that serve the community, Peterson said.

Peterson would not comment on speculation that G&B was negotiating with Costco Wholesale for a store at the mall.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Grayden Jones Staff writer Staff writer Jennifer Plunkett contributed to this story.