Ralphs 69 goldenwest and warner

[ClownLoach]

There have been a couple Ralphs closures in Huntington Beach:

6942 Warner - appears to have closed around 2011 (maybe it was too close to 5241 Warner)



10081 Adams (which was a Ralphs Marketplace) that closed in 2016. That was probably one of the last new build Ralphs Stores (or at least one of the last 5 new build Ralphs Stores)... Whole Foods took that building over. I don't think that store failed as Ralphs.

There were way too many Ralphs in that area of West Huntington Beach/HB Harbor. At one point they had 5 including 3 on Warner in about a 3 mile stretch.


-Warner "Meadowlark" (now flagship Fresh Fare, still open)
-Goldenwest and Garfield (newer store too close to Goldenwest and Warner, now a slow Fresh Fare)
-Beach and Garfield (closed shortly after opening of Goldenwest and Garfield, then Stein Mart, just grand opened as small format Target)
-Goldenwest and Warner (now Sprouts and the old oval Ralphs sign tower is still there with a Sprouts logo)
-Warner in Huntington Harbour (converted Hughes, now Trader Joe's).

They effectively have gone from 5 stores in the area down to 2. Albertsons/Vons in the same time has gone from 3 stores... to 3.

Do you know when the goldenest and warner store closed?
It had to be after I moved to AZ.

I think it closed around 2011.

[ClownLoach]

Ralphs probably got suckered in and spent an ungodly amount of money on their rent only for the store to hemorrhage cash from day one. It definitely closed due to underperformance right at the ten year mark. The store was always completely dead, almost uncomfortably so. It also had a strange interior - probably the last to go up with the brown, cream walls with the green script and giant Ralphs logos everywhere, but then it had a full warehouse ceiling that was very dark and a dark brown, very dull looking concrete floor. It was a twin to Lake Forest which is unremodeled to this day and possibly the gloomiest feeling Ralphs you'll ever enter. The store decor felt very.... brown. It opened as a 24 hour store and slashed to a early close within two months. The Wells Fargo next door closed only a few years after it opened as a new build super sized branch during the era where they were only opening inside supermarkets. There were rumors of closure just a few years after it opened.

It sat empty for a year or so then Orchard and Ulta split it. Orchard demolished a good portion of the Ralphs for a garden center and actually had left some roof in place to hold up the HVAC units - the ducts were reinsulated and routed back onto the sales floor. Obviously they didn't last long either and Lowes liquidated the chain less than a year after they opened. Whole Foods had to build it back up. PetSmart converted a bank branch there on a tiny corner and opened a store that only had four aisles in it. They must have been convinced they had stolen a super valuable site with those insane car counts and spent a fortune on this tiny store sparing no expense. It never had any customers and closed after less than two years.

OSH stole some other supermarket sites around that time that were high dollar and pretty good stores. One was a 1999 build Lucky in Pleasant Hill (built with Jewel interior, I forget if it opened as Albertsons or as Lucky).

That Ralphs was basically one built in a Kroger type of feel. Kroger builds of that period were, yes, rather brown due to the cement flooring and the way the interior went with it. The dark ceiling also was a strange choice, not sure what the deal with that was. All you would have had to do was install a white tile floor with some accents around perimeter/frozen around the store, made the ceiling white or cream, and it would have basically looked like any other less than 10 year old Ralphs looked at the time (clean and bright).

Petsmart has a store like you describe in Carmichael, CA as well. It has a few more than 4 aisles though. It is in front of a Wal Mart Neighborhood Market and Home Depot, I am not sure what the building was before, perhaps a video rental store. It seems to have steady traffic.

I found a single picture on Yelp, which further explains how dead this store was. The ceiling was painted a very dark beige and the lights were turned 90 degrees from the normal Ralphs - so they were perpendicular to the aisles. That is probably why it felt so dark even during daylight hours.

[Retailuser]

Wow that dead store lasted that long. When I worked there we were lucky to have three customers an hour.

[norcalriteaidclerk]

Ralphs probably got suckered in and spent an ungodly amount of money on their rent only for the store to hemorrhage cash from day one. It definitely closed due to underperformance right at the ten year mark. The store was always completely dead, almost uncomfortably so. It also had a strange interior - probably the last to go up with the brown, cream walls with the green script and giant Ralphs logos everywhere, but then it had a full warehouse ceiling that was very dark and a dark brown, very dull looking concrete floor. It was a twin to Lake Forest which is unremodeled to this day and possibly the gloomiest feeling Ralphs you'll ever enter. The store decor felt very.... brown. It opened as a 24 hour store and slashed to a early close within two months. The Wells Fargo next door closed only a few years after it opened as a new build super sized branch during the era where they were only opening inside supermarkets. There were rumors of closure just a few years after it opened.

It sat empty for a year or so then Orchard and Ulta split it. Orchard demolished a good portion of the Ralphs for a garden center and actually had left some roof in place to hold up the HVAC units - the ducts were reinsulated and routed back onto the sales floor. Obviously they didn't last long either and Lowes liquidated the chain less than a year after they opened. Whole Foods had to build it back up. PetSmart converted a bank branch there on a tiny corner and opened a store that only had four aisles in it. They must have been convinced they had stolen a super valuable site with those insane car counts and spent a fortune on this tiny store sparing no expense. It never had any customers and closed after less than two years.

OSH stole some other supermarket sites around that time that were high dollar and pretty good stores. One was a 1999 build Lucky in Pleasant Hill (built with Jewel interior, I forget if it opened as Albertsons or as Lucky).

That Ralphs was basically one built in a Kroger type of feel. Kroger builds of that period were, yes, rather brown due to the cement flooring and the way the interior went with it. The dark ceiling also was a strange choice, not sure what the deal with that was. All you would have had to do was install a white tile floor with some accents around perimeter/frozen around the store, made the ceiling white or cream, and it would have basically looked like any other less than 10 year old Ralphs looked at the time (clean and bright).

Petsmart has a store like you describe in Carmichael, CA as well. It has a few more than 4 aisles though. It is in front of a Wal Mart Neighborhood Market and Home Depot, I am not sure what the building was before, perhaps a video rental store. It seems to have steady traffic.

For the longest time,the Carmichael Petsmart was actually a bank(Security Pacific)then credit union branch.The canopy/awning over the teller drive-thru remains intact.

[ClownLoach]

Wow that dead store lasted that long. When I worked there we were lucky to have three customers an hour.

And now they're opening an Amazon Fresh across the street where Big Lots used to be!

I think it was a case of the little old store being sandwiched between two big newer stores. Too many stores in the area.

That Amazon will be dead on arrival.

[Retailuser]

I hope that this is allowed here but I found this on this sties sister site.
https://www.groceteria.ca/board/viewtop ... =27&t=2846

[submariner]

I hope that this is allowed here but I found this on this sties sister site.
https://www.groceteria.ca/board/viewtop ... =27&t=2846

Hey, That's me!

I'll allow it

[jalberni]

There were way too many Ralphs in that area of West Huntington Beach/HB Harbor. At one point they had 5 including 3 on Warner in about a 3 mile stretch.


-Warner "Meadowlark" (now flagship Fresh Fare, still open)
-Goldenwest and Garfield (newer store too close to Goldenwest and Warner, now a slow Fresh Fare)
-Beach and Garfield (closed shortly after opening of Goldenwest and Garfield, then Stein Mart, just grand opened as small format Target)
-Goldenwest and Warner (now Sprouts and the old oval Ralphs sign tower is still there with a Sprouts logo)
-Warner in Huntington Harbour (converted Hughes, now Trader Joe's).

They effectively have gone from 5 stores in the area down to 2. Albertsons/Vons in the same time has gone from 3 stores... to 3.

Do you know when the goldenest and warner store closed?
It had to be after I moved to AZ.

I think it closed around 2011.

I think the store actually closed in 2008. I found on a Google Street View from July the signs were still up. A street view from December of the same year showed the signs were gone. This old Ralphs is extremely fascinating to me. That old interior it had is awesome. I don't know what other stores had that interior, but seemed a bit scarce (correct me if I'm wrong). Only other places I've seen that interior was from the intro scene in The Big Lebowski (I think that store was in Pasadena), and on an episode of Full House.

https://www.google.com/maps/@33.7154571 ... &entry=ttu

https://www.google.com/maps/@33.7154565 ... &entry=ttu

[Alpha8472]

Ralphs probably got suckered in and spent an ungodly amount of money on their rent only for the store to hemorrhage cash from day one. It definitely closed due to underperformance right at the ten year mark. The store was always completely dead, almost uncomfortably so. It also had a strange interior - probably the last to go up with the brown, cream walls with the green script and giant Ralphs logos everywhere, but then it had a full warehouse ceiling that was very dark and a dark brown, very dull looking concrete floor. It was a twin to Lake Forest which is unremodeled to this day and possibly the gloomiest feeling Ralphs you'll ever enter. The store decor felt very.... brown. It opened as a 24 hour store and slashed to a early close within two months. The Wells Fargo next door closed only a few years after it opened as a new build super sized branch during the era where they were only opening inside supermarkets. There were rumors of closure just a few years after it opened.

It sat empty for a year or so then Orchard and Ulta split it. Orchard demolished a good portion of the Ralphs for a garden center and actually had left some roof in place to hold up the HVAC units - the ducts were reinsulated and routed back onto the sales floor. Obviously they didn't last long either and Lowes liquidated the chain less than a year after they opened. Whole Foods had to build it back up. PetSmart converted a bank branch there on a tiny corner and opened a store that only had four aisles in it. They must have been convinced they had stolen a super valuable site with those insane car counts and spent a fortune on this tiny store sparing no expense. It never had any customers and closed after less than two years.

OSH stole some other supermarket sites around that time that were high dollar and pretty good stores. One was a 1999 build Lucky in Pleasant Hill (built with Jewel interior, I forget if it opened as Albertsons or as Lucky).

That Ralphs was basically one built in a Kroger type of feel. Kroger builds of that period were, yes, rather brown due to the cement flooring and the way the interior went with it. The dark ceiling also was a strange choice, not sure what the deal with that was. All you would have had to do was install a white tile floor with some accents around perimeter/frozen around the store, made the ceiling white or cream, and it would have basically looked like any other less than 10 year old Ralphs looked at the time (clean and bright).

Petsmart has a store like you describe in Carmichael, CA as well. It has a few more than 4 aisles though. It is in front of a Wal Mart Neighborhood Market and Home Depot, I am not sure what the building was before, perhaps a video rental store. It seems to have steady traffic.

The Lucky in Pleasant Hill was opened as an Albertsons in 2000. The original Lucky planned it in the late 90s and even put up signs advertising a future Lucky Supermarket to anchor the new Downtown Pleasant Hill.

Albertsons had already rebranded all Lucky stores to Albertsons in 1999. The new store opened as an Albertsons with the Jewel Osco decor. One side was a supermarket and the other side was like a drugstore. There was a Starbucks kiosk in there. Safeway saw how popular Starbucks cafes were and a few years later started adding Starbucks kiosks to practically all Safeway stores.

This was one of the largest supermarkets in the county. Save Mart took it over in 2007 and rebranded to Lucky. It was one of the best looking and most popular supermarkets that Save Mart owned.

That suddenly ended when OSH booted Lucky out and took over the store. OSH was a decent store, but it never brought in customers like the supermarket before it. Then OSH suddenly closed after only a short time. It was such a waste. To this day, most of the building is still empty.

[storewanderer]

The Lucky in Pleasant Hill was opened as an Albertsons in 2000. The original Lucky planned it in the late 90s and even put up signs advertising a future Lucky Supermarket to anchor the new Downtown Pleasant Hill.

Albertsons had already rebranded all Lucky stores to Albertsons in 1999. The new store opened as an Albertsons with the Jewel Osco decor. One side was a supermarket and the other side was like a drugstore. There was a Starbucks kiosk in there. Safeway saw how popular Starbucks cafes were and a few years later started adding Starbucks kiosks to practically all Safeway stores.

This was one of the largest supermarkets in the county. Save Mart took it over in 2007 and rebranded to Lucky. It was one of the best looking and most popular supermarkets that Save Mart owned.

That suddenly ended when OSH booted Lucky out and took over the store. OSH was a decent store, but it never brought in customers like the supermarket before it. Then OSH suddenly closed after only a short time. It was such a waste. To this day, most of the building is still empty.

The irony is the current new build Safeways in NorCal are very much like that Pleasant Hill Lucky in layout, not quite identical, but very close.

I do wonder had OSH not wanted the building, if Lucky would have stayed. It was odd for the lease on a new store to have been so short. Seems like it was only a 15 year lease.