Rosauers Supermarket On Trent To Close

Rosauers Supermarkets Inc. will close its grocery store at 8517 E. Trent on March 1, citing stiff competition from newer stores in the area.

Many customers were upset by the news.

Millwood Mayor Jeanne Batson said she has shopped at the Rosauers on East Trent “forever and forever.”

“I’m going to miss it. A lot of people are going to miss it,” she said.

“I think it’s pretty terrible. I like the store a lot,” said Karyl Reno, who lives six blocks west of the store and comes in two or three times a week.

Told why the grocery chain was closing the 25-year-old store, Reno said, “I guess that’s just part of the business.”

Three other grocery stores have opened during the 1990s within a two-mile radius of the Rosauers on East Trent.

A Tidyman’s opened in 1996 south of Trent on Argonne. In 1992, Albertson’s opened a store only a few blocks away at the corner of Trent and Argonne. A Safeway store north of Interstate 90 on Argonne opened in 1990.

When the Rosauers store opened on East Trent in 1973, it had “the best location available with the school on the corner,” according to Rosauers president Larry Geller.

His reference was to the old Argonne Junior High, formerly West Valley High School, which was torn down to make way for Albertson’s.

That store at Trent and Argonne was better positioned to capture commuters heading northbound from I-90 along busy Argonne Road than the Rosauers to the east.

Geller would not discuss how much the store’s sales had declined because of competition.

Inside the store on Thursday afternoon, managers informed customers the store would be closing. Outside the Rosauers store, there was a “for sale” sign and a dozen cars in the parking lot.

A few blocks away, there were five times as many cars in the Albertson’s parking lot, as customers bustled in and out of the store.

Geller said the Rosauers store’s lease expires March 1. The store’s 40-some employees will be relocated to other stores, he added.

Rosauers has looked at half a dozen sites in the Argonne and Trent area with an eye on building a new store, Geller said. The company will continue to look, he added.

For now, the Spokane-based, employee-owned grocery chain will continue to operate its two other Valley stores, including the Rosauers at 10902 E. Sprague, which will move to the University City Shopping Center after a new store is built there, and Huckleberry’s Fresh Market at Sprague and Sullivan.

Rosauers operates 18 grocery and health food stores in Washington, Idaho, Oregon and Montana.

, DataTimes