North Pole, Delta stores tentatively to open in early '25
Work continues inside Three Bears Alaska’s two newest stores now that the buildings have been nearly enclosed. If all goes well, the Wasilla-based grocery retailer’s biggest store will open early next year in North Pole.
Workers hustled last month to get the two structures erected before cold weather set in. And now that the walls and roofs are up, they’ve begun working inside the buildings.
“That’s exactly what was been going on,” says Joan Travostino, Three Bears’ vice president for business development.. “Our goal was to enclose, as best as we could, both structures.”
Travostino says if the company can avoid the supply-chain problems that’ve delayed the projects up to this point, it should be able to open the North Pole store by March.
“The North Pole complex is going to be a Three Bears, with a large, warehouse-style store,” she said, “and we also are going to have an Ace Hardware.”
Travostino says the North Pole store’s combined footprint of a 55,000-square-foot grocery and 14,000-square-foot hardware outlet will be the company’s biggest store in Alaska. Right now, the biggest in-state is at the Four Corners retail complex in Palmer. The largest overall is the 61,000-square-foot Butte, Mont., store.
The Delta Junction store will be less than half the size of the one under construction in North Pole – 28,000 square feet, about the same as the Three Bears outlet in Healy.
Travostino says if negotiations pan out, both the North Pole and Delta stores also will have a bank branch office.
“We're in discussion with a financial institution,” she said. “It's not far enough along that I can disclose it, but the conversation is ongoing.”
Both North Pole and Delta also will have gas station/convenience stores next door. Delta’s is already in business, because the company bought out the previous owner earlier this year.
In August, she added, Three Bears acquired a couple of Petrostar stations in Fairbanks, one on Airport Way, the other on Wembley Avenue.
Travostino says all will be re-branded as Shell stations.
“We're proud of our working relationship with Shell,” she said in an interview last week.
The projects are all part of an expansion effort that Three Bears launched in 2022, after the company entered into a deal with a Pacific Northwest-based private-equity firm. Travostino says company officials plan to continue looking for opportunities, while at the same time keeping an eye on the impact of a grocery megamerger between Kroger and Albertsons.
“As a forward-looking retail, grocer and fuel-station owner, of course we are watching how the Albertsons -Kroger merger is developing,” she said. “We have our own business-development plan that we're following … but, we’re watching it closely.”
The merger is now on hold, pending the outcome of lawsuits opposing the deal, including one filed by the Federal Trade Commission.
