Metro Jacksonville

More empty strip malls coming to a neighborhood near you:

QuoteAll Food Lion stores on the First Coast, including a dozen in Jacksonville, are closing, company officials announced Wednesday night. The stores will be closed within 30 days, the company said.

Approximately 900 Florida employees of the chain will be affected with about 450 of those coming from Jacksonville locations, according to Food Lion spokeswoman Christy Phillips-Brown.

Stores in Clay, St. Johns, Nassau, Baker and Alachua counties are also closing. In addition, the Food Lion in Waycross is among the Georgia stores slated to be closed.

The company will convert its Food Lion in Lake City to a Harveys store. All of the other stores in Florida are closing.

http://jacksonville.com/news/florida/2012-01-11/story/food-lion-closing-all-first-coast-stores

The only Food Lion that I had found in the last ten years that was even worth going to was the one at Atlantic/San Pablo. And it went downhill quick. Last time I went there (about two years ago), I kept finding food on the shelves that way past it's expiration date. Yes, I know that this will cause more empty strip malls and loss of some jobs, but not a big loss in terms on the grocery business.

there's a brand new one in St. Augustine that will be closing....now that is stupid!

truth be told, I'm no fan of Food Lion....but it does/did provide an option for many....now they'll likely join the herd at Wal Mart!

Really stinks. The employees were totally blindsided by this (my dad's wife being a longtime Food Lion worker).

The stores were pretty lousy though - the company tried an experiment with the Atlantic and San Pablo store. I guess it was a failed experiment.

Aren't they owned by an investment group or something?

I haven't been to a Food Lion since it came out that they bleached their meat back in 97.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/jan-june97/lion_1-15.html (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/jan-june97/lion_1-15.html)

more empty strip malls. Surburban blight expands. They are owned by some group out of Brussels.

Started by ex Winn-Dixie employees, later sold to that overseas group.  I tried really hard to like Food Lion.  I worked for years for a real estate developer who leased to several Food Lion stores when they first came to the Jacksonville market. But try as I might, I just never did like them.

Quote from: fsujax on January 12, 2012, 11:22:19 AM
more empty strip malls. Surburban blight expands. They are owned by some group out of Brussels.

I thought they were owned by a German company.

I frequently shop at the Food Lion in Julington Creek. Love the store!!


They seem really progressive and a no frills store.

I am sad to see them go  :(

QuoteSupermarket chain gets smarter about sustainable seafood

By Heather Clancy | August 2, 2010, 5:29 AM PDT


In mid-July, Delhaize America, which owns the Hannaford, Sweetbay, Food Lion and Bottom Dollar Food supermarkets, said it will require its seafood suppliers to verify that they source products locally from sources that use sustainable fishing practices. The thing that I find particularly interesting is that this policy applies not just to fresh fish, it also covers anything that is frozen. Here’s what one of the company’s corporate responsibility managers, George Parmenter, said in the press release:


“We want our shoppers to have confidence that seafood they buy from us is from fisheries that are viable and maintained for the future. The health of fisheries is important to us as a retailer, both fro the long-term product supply and for reducing the environmental impacts of products we sell.”

This particular topic is near and dear to my heart for three reasons:
1.Given my druthers, I could eat fish or seafood pretty much every day, except for the sort to which I am highly allergic (sadly, that is salmon and trout).
2.I used to be a member of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which has been distributing the Seafood Watch list for as long as I can personally remember (easily 10 years, and I think more).
3.I think I am not alone in saying that most Americans are really clued into seafood sourcing issues in the wake of the BP oil spill in the Gulf.

Delhaize is working with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute to develop its policy. The specifics of the policy include these principles, which apply to anything that is harvested from the wild.
•Keeping detailed harvest data, so that the company can ensure sourcing levels are within certain limits
•Coming up with restocking plans
•Maintaining active enforcement policies

When it comes to farm-raised fish and seafood, Delhaize will source products certified under the Best Aquaculture Practices program.

The policy is supposed to go into effect by March 31, 2011.

How do the major supermarket chains fare on the sustainable seafood issue? Of course, Greenpeace has a list of who is naughty and nice, in its estimation. The latest update, published at the end of April, shows Target at the top of the heap, followed by Wegmans and Whole Foods.

Delhaize is one of the companies that gets a passing grade, although none of the organization gets what Greenpeace designates as a “good” score.

The organization details the rationale for sustainable seafood policy in its ongoing Carting Away the Oceans report.

http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/business-brains/supermarket-chain-gets-smarter-about-sustainable-seafood/8993

So I guess they are indeed owned by a group in Brussels:

http://www.delhaizegroup.com/en/Contacts.aspx

I used to like Food Lion at one point. I shopped there ONLY from 2000-2003. Then I just lost interest. I havent stepped foot in a food lion in almost ten years. I go to Winn Dixie or Walmart. And Food Lions meat looks weird!

The Food Lions by me are generally pretty nice, and they are supportive of the charitable event I run, but I have been in some miserable ones.  I'd imagine it'd be hard for them to get a foothold in a Publix and W-D dominated world except maybe as a budget alternative, and Wal-Mart, Save A Lot, etc. can easily undercut them on the budget side.

Twelve more dead strip malls in Jacksonville is definitely not good news.

Don't worry.  With the mobility fee moratorium we'll build ourselves out of this.  Just wait and see.

I guess the distribution warehouse in Green Cove will close if it hasn't already. 

It has been closed for a while.

Quote from: thelakelander on January 12, 2012, 01:31:26 PM
Don't worry.  With the mobility fee moratorium we'll build ourselves out of this.  Just wait and see.

+1000 Only problem is the city council will probably try to use this as a quote from you to prove the moratorium isn't a gross  betrayal of their constituents.

I think that it still functions as a Harvey's distro center - right?

GREEN COVE SPRINGS? It's alive and well.

FOOD LION built a 793,500 square foot warehouse complex south of town near US-17 and on the CSX mainline. The warehouse has two railroad tracks within the fence and over 7 acres of parking. The complex was built in 1988 and expanded to its current size in 1992 only to be closed and abandoned by 1973. The property is laid out so that the warehouse complex can be expanded to 900,000 square feet and lease space is currently on the market. Amazingly not only is this thing near US-17 and on CSX, it is less then 5 miles from the Port of Green Cove Springs and the former LEE Field Naval Air Station airport. Any real estate company that picks up on those facts should have no problem in filling it up.

As of 2004, Georgia-based Harvey's Supermarkets, owned by the same group that owns FOOD LION but operated as a completely independent subsidiary, signed an agreement to take about a third of the space in a Green Cove Springs warehouse. Harvey's initially leased 244,000 square feet of freezer/cooler space in the old Food Lion distribution center.  Harvey's runs a three-shift operation at the warehouse employing about 100 people. Harveys has added about $2.5 million dollars in improvements to the complex.

Harveys  has a nice store in Green Cove Springs (actually Magnolia Springs) just north of town and as they are just across the river from me, I can tell you that Harveys keeps the highway polished along SR-16. This probably isn't going to be the disaster it might seem to be, I fully expect Harveys will come away with some if not all of these stores in the near future. I've spotted their trucks over at the FOOD LION in Palencia.

Harveys Supermarket

Harveys stores are mainly located in rural markets within the Deep South with a focus towards quality foods (primarily in meat and produce) and service. Since being acquired by Delhaize in 2003 (marking the end of US-based ownership), over a dozen Food Lion stores in rural areas have been converted to Harveys. Unlike Bloom and Bottom Dollar however, which are merely extensions of the Food Lion brand, Harveys appears to operate separately within the Food Lion LLC structure and is seen more as a subsidiary. As of December 2009, there were 70 Harveys stores in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina.

OCKLAWAHA

Quote from: Lunican on January 12, 2012, 01:27:06 PM
Twelve more dead strip malls in Jacksonville is definitely not good news.

Yup. The majority of the Food Lions in the city are on the Westside also. So the strips malls on the WS will be hit the harest.  The better think fast about a replacement teanet. I know the old Food Lion on baymeadows has been Baileys gym for years now. But all the other closed Food Lions around town are still empty.

Good news for one of the old Food Lion spots, the one on Normandy next to Dollar Tree is gonna be turned into a Save-A-Lot. It has the perfect 'medium' size too.

The old Food Lion on the 4700 block (?) of Main is being converted into a Save-A-Lot as well.

Wow, this economic recovery is even better then I suspected!

The Food Lion on Merrill Road in Arlington is going to be converted to a Walmart Neighborhood Market:

http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2012-06-18/story/walmart-neighborhood-markets-moving-first-coasts-vacant-food-lion-stores