Palmer Fred Meyer to move, expand

PALMER — The largest retailers in Palmer appear to be engaged in a protracted game of musical chairs, dancing around the town’s main intersection.

Fred Meyer has announced plans to demolish the Pioneer Square Mall and build a new Fred Meyer move store at the current location at the corner of Glenn Highway and Palmer-Wasilla Highway. The mall has been largely empty since 2010, when the Carrs made its own across-the-street move to the south west corner of that same intersection.

The timeframe for Fred Meyer’s move is still up in the air.

“Well, we are hoping to purchase some adjacent property just to the north of it, so we’re going to continue working on that for a little while,” said the retail chain’s community affairs director, Melinda Merril. “We’d either start construction in 2015 or 2016.”

She said that the current store in Palmer — essentially a grocery store but with an electronics section and a small selection of toys and clothing — is among the smallest in the chain’s portfolio.

“Palmer is 56,000 (square feet). We have a couple of other stores about that size, we have a 70,000 square foot one,” Merril said.

She said that Wasilla’s full-size store is just under 170,000 square feet and the new Palmer store would be either 100,000 or 130,000, depending on whether the chain is able to purchase that adjacent land.

“Even a 100,000 square foot store would have an expanded selection of food and then additional general merchandise, some apparel and some home and that kind of thing,” she said.

The construction would cost $20 million to $30 million to build.

Merril said the chain plans to sell its current building but hasn’t nailed down anything definite yet. She said the chain is also looking at its options with regard to the gas station it opened up in 2009 at Arctic Avenue and Glenn Highway, a few blocks from its store.

“I don’t know that we would rule anything out, but we have lots of fuel centers that are off our property like that, so it’s not that unusual,” she said.

Fred Meyer’s history in Palmer has been somewhat fraught. When the store first came to town in 2003, some worried the store would change the character of a downtown that has come to be known as a place for local small businesses.

Others welcomed the arrival, asking store officials then why they couldn’t build a bigger facility. The answer was that the size of the current lot restricted development of a full-size store.

Palmer Mayor DeLena Johnson on Tuesday trumpeted the news on her Facebook page.

“I’m excited for this to happen, it will definitely fill a need in the community,” she said.

Cindy Bettine, a Wasilla business owner and former Mat-Su Borough assemblywoman, chimed in on that post with her own take.

“The old mall was wore out. I’m glad they will get a new structure. Hopefully (Palmer) will demand a good-looking building and decent, attractive parking instead of a big box store with a nightmare parking lot,” Bettine wrote.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.