Stocking up on groceries

Marysville-area shoppers soon will have more selection at the grocery store — and more selection among stores.

Tulalip tribal officials disclosed earlier this month that the Wal-Mart at Quil Ceda Village will add a 77,000-square-foot grocery department by late April. Meanwhile, Boise, Idaho-based discount grocer WinCo Foods has hired a developer to build a strip anchored by a 92,000-square-foot WinCo on 116th Street Northeast; the store is expected to open late next year or in early 2005.

Wal-Mart and WinCo, which promote discount prices and 24-hour shopping, will join a Safeway, Albertsons and Haggen that already serve shoppers in the Marysville and Tulalip communities.

Local economic-development officials say there's room for the new businesses, though.

"It's probably going to fly," said Kathleen Baron, information-services coordinator at the Greater Marysville Tulalip Chamber of Commerce. "Our mentality is that we do things the cheapest way possible (with shopping)."

Baron noted that business and tourism related to the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, B.C., and the tribes' plans to build a 140-store outlet mall by 2005 will bolster interest in discount shopping in the area, which has roughly 28,000 residents.

Krista Haverly, a senior associate at C.B. Richard Ellis who handles retail real estate, said the simultaneous interest of two large discount grocers is indicative of the companies' aggressive expansions. She also said WinCo has shown a willingness to develop in semirural areas and suburbs far from major urban centers.

Haverly said the interest from "big box" grocers who focus on discounts is logical for Marysville.

"They don't have a Costco up there; the closest one is in Everett," she said. "The Albertsons, Safeways and QFCs are going to be hurting (when discount grocers arrive)."

The Wal-Mart expansion isn't a complete surprise: The Quil Ceda Village store has an option on its lease that allows the expansion, said John McCoy, who oversees the tribes' economic-development efforts.

Wal-Mart's expansion into grocery offerings reclassifies the store into what its Bentonville, Ark.-based parent company considers a "supercenter," or large-format store. The company announced late last month that it will add 220 to 230 such stores nationwide during the year beginning Feb. 1, and that 140 of those will come from expansions.

Wal-Mart has a Lynnwood-area store and has considered other sites in the county, including the Buffalo Square area, a part of unincorporated Snohomish County surrounded by Everett, Mill Creek and Snohomish.

Wal-Mart officials, however, say nothing definitive is planned in the area besides the Quil Ceda Village expansion.

"We have not announced anything about Everett," said Amy Hill, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman. "It's something we're looking at."

The company will add stores in the next two years in other areas of Washington, though, including Covington; Lakewood, Pierce County; Poulsbo, Kitsap County; and Sequim, Hill said.

WinCo, which works with White-Leasure Development of Boise, opened a store in Federal Way in 2000 and has plans for a Kent store.

Ken Lenz, a project manager for White-Leasure, and Marysville planning officials said construction on the Gateway Shopping Center — which will contain WinCo and two smaller retail buildings — won't begin before next summer.

Last summer, the company spent $3.4 million to acquire several vacant and residential lots in the area as it prepared to build. Lenz said the company is still negotiating to buy property from a mobile-home park.

Wal-Mart's Hill, who works in Nevada, said Marysville won't be the first U.S. community to have both a WinCo and a Wal-Mart.

She noted that WinCo and Wal-Mart are less than half a mile apart in an affluent area near Reno, Nev., and they're also neighbors in a lower-income part of that region.

"We think they're a great competitor," she said. "Everyone likes a bargain."

Jane Hodges: 425-745-7813 or jhodges@seattletimes.com