Then and Now: Spokane Valley Rosauers

Mon., Dec. 9, 2024

1953: This aerial photograph by Jack Cunningham shows Rosauers new Spokane Valley supermarket that opened in May 1953. The $385,000 market was built by J.M. Rosauer. The 17,000-square-foot store was constructed of pumice block by Spokane contractors Peter J. Young & Son. The paved parking area around the store will accommodate more than 200 cars. Across the front of the market will be a 21-stool soda fountain. (SPOKESMAN-REVIEW PHOTO ARCHIVES)

By Jesse Tinsley jesset@spokesman.com (509) 459-5378

As a teen, Joseph Merton Rosauer worked in the store his parents operated in East Spokane in the 1920s and early 1930s. At 19 years old, “Mert” Rosauer borrowed $1,000 from his parents and opened his own store on East Sprague Avenue.

It was the depths of the Great Depression and times were tough. Four years later he paid his parents back and bought another store. Early in his career, he associated with United Retail Merchants, now called URM, to supply his independent stores.

Rosauer’s start in the grocery business coincided with the rise of Safeway and other chains and entrepreneurs like Idaho groceryman Joe Albertson. But the Rosauers chain grew into the largest independent chain in the Spokane area.

He continued adding stores through the 1940s. During World War II he ran a store in the Victory Heights housing project, where defense workers and military families lived. In 1949, the grocer built a major store at Third Avenue and Oak Street in Spokane which some called Spokane’s first “supermarket,” featuring a broad range of products, fresh produce, a meat counter and modern amenities like an in-store bakery and recorded music piped through the store.

Rosauer put a second store at 5425 E. Trent Ave. then put his next major store at Sprague Avenue and University Road in Spokane Valley in 1953. With the help of developer Earl McCarthy, the new store opened to immediate success, with 20,000 customers walking through it in the first two days.

A small fire of unknown origin damaged the Valley store in 1959, but the grocer rebuilt and it became part of the growing University City shopping center, which was led by McCarthy’s development company, with funding from investor Harry Magnuson, adding anchor stores like the Crescent, JC Penney and Newberry’s, plus many smaller stores in a $3 million, 200,000-square-foot shopping mall.

The rebuilt grocery store was expanded from its earlier footprint and U-City became Spokane Valley’s shopping hub. U-City would sputter in the early 1990s, overshadowed by the new Spokane Valley Mall opening in 1997.

Mert Rosauer’s grocery chain had grown to two dozen stores when he sold it to URM in 1984. Rosauer died in 1990 at age 76.