Three Bears to purchase Big Lake IGA

BIG LAKE — There’s good news in store for the future of the Big Lake IGA store.

Sales up to 50 percent off continue at the store through this evening when the grocery store will close for 10 days, for a quick remodel and restock effort before reopening April 3 as the fourth Three Bears Alaska grocery store in the Mat-Su Borough.

Wasilla-headquartered Three Bears Alaska, which operates outlets on Knik-Goose Bay Road, on Pittman Road in Meadow Lakes, and on the Palmer-Wasilla Highway, has agreed to buy the store from former owner by Anchorage-based grocery store chain Omni Enterprises, according to longtime store manager Jerry Hill.

“It’s going to be a regular grocery store,” he said.

When the store reopens April 3, it will be officially known as Three Bears Big Lake. The store was a struggling Carrs outlet when it was purchased by a local resident and renamed Steve’s Foodboy. The name changed to Big Lake IGA in 2012.

The store’s future was uncertain last week after Omni Enterprises announced its liquidation, Hill said. The grocery store is a pillar business of Big Lake, and employs about 25 people, all of whom will retain their jobs, according to Hill and officials with Three Bears Alaska.

Big Lake Chamber of Commerce president Ina Mueller said the purchase was especially welcome news because the store sold to a local company.

“It would have been really bad if they were just closing and no one had bought the store,” she said. “That would have been devastating to the community.

Saving the store was motivated equally by concern about the community and self-interest, said Three Bears vice president and CFO Steve Mierop.

“One of the things when you come into our stores, usually it’s in the front, is ‘Alaskans serving Alaskans since 1980,’” he said. “There was a chance that store would go dark for at least a short spell, and we’d rather not see the store go dark.

“We’re out here, we’re part of the community,” Mierop added. “That’s why we’ll be offering employment to all of the employees.”

But Three Bears is a business, Mierop said.

“We operate for a profit,” he said. “It’s a community that we already serve to some degree through our KGB and Meadow Lakes stores. This store is right in the center of the community. This will give us more business out of the Big Lake area.”

A woman who answered the phone Thursday at Omni’s Anchorage headquarters said no statement about the matter was immediately available.

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2269, brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.