Tri-Cities Safeway store is closing this month. What does it mean for employees?
The Tri-Cities is losing one of its oldest grocery stores.
The Kennewick Avenue Safeway location off Highway 395 will be closing at the end of October.
The move, which was confirmed by store employees, comes just after the Clearwater Avenue Albertsons underwent a major remoding and was converted to a Safeway.
Albertsons bought Safeway in 2015, and has rebranded many Washington stores under the Safeway banner, including Richland and Kennewick locations.
United Food and Commercial Workers 1439 representative Rob Roundy said they were only recently notified of the decision to close, and do not expect any layoffs.
The union will be working with Albertsons to place all of the employees at other stores. With this closure, there will be one Albertsons left in Pasco, two Safeways in Richland and one Safeway in Kennewick.
It is unclear what prompted the decision to close the Highway 395 store or how many employees are affected. Pharmacy customers are being told they need to move their prescriptions to another Tri-Cities location by Oct. 15.
On Wednesday, the only indications the store is closing are “Sale on Everything” signs offering deep discounts.
Albertsons officials did not respond to a Herald request for information about the closure.
For more than 40 years, the Kennewick Avenue Safeway has served as the anchor tenant for the Kennewick Plaza shopping center, which was built in 1979, according to former plaza owner PMF Investments.
The store was remodeled and expanded to 61,000 square feet in 2001 after PMF bought the property.
Bellevue-based Wallace Properties bought the shopping center from PMF in 2013 for $22 million.
This story was originally published October 5, 2022 at 4:32 PM.
