Shaw's to close Westbrook supermarket next month
FILE PHOTO
Kroger has a made a $24.6 billion bid for Albertson, the parent company of Shaw's.
Shaw’s Supermarkets will permanently close its Westbrook store by Feb. 26, a spokeswoman told Mainebiz on Monday.
The company will try to place employees of the supermarket at other Shaw’s locations, Teresa Edington said. She did not indicate how many workers are affected by the closure.
The grocery retailer is explaining little about its shuttering the market at 31 Main St. In a statement Edington said, “Like all retailers, we’re constantly evaluating the performance of our stores. Closing a location is always a tough decision, but we’re focused on continuing to provide the products and services our customers value most in Maine and beyond.”
Despite the plans, windows signs at the supermarket on Saturday still advertised "now hiring" in large bold letters.
The store is located in Westbrook Crossing, a 200,000-square-foot shopping plaza directly across Main Street from Rock Row, the mixed-use complex now under development and that will cover 2 million square feet when fully built out. A Market Basket supermarket opened at Rock Row in August 2020.
Other options for grocery shoppers are nearby, too. There’s a Hannaford grocery store 2 miles away, near downtown Westbrook, and another branch of Shaw’s only slightly farther, on Outer Congress Street in Portland.
In July 2015, Shaw’s closed a 90-employee supermarket in Biddeford. That closure occurred two years after the city became home to the first Maine location of Market Basket, which is based in Tewksbury, Mass.
Shaw’s, based in West Bridgewater, Mass., currently operates 21 supermarkets in Maine and 150 across New England. The chain is one of the oldest continuously operated supermarket businesses in the United States and traces its roots to 1860, when George Clinton Shaw opened a store on Middle Street in Portland, according to the company website.
Supermarket conglomerate Albertsons Cos. Inc. (NYSE: ACI), based in Idaho, has owned Shaw’s since 2004 and now has over 2,200 stores nationwide. Albertson’s on Jan. 11 reported results for the third quarter of its 2021 fiscal year, including a 5.2% increase in same-store sales and adjusted earnings of $457.2 million, or 79 cents per share, up from $386.6 million, or 66 cents per share.
Westbrook Crossing, which is co-anchored by a Kohl’s big box store, opened in 1963. The plaza’s previous occupants included a Bradlees store, which closed in 2001 and is now the Kohl’s site. A 38,000-square-foot Shop ’n Save supermarket did business next door, and is now the site of the Shaw’s.
Boston-based WS Development, which owns Westbrook Crossing and over a dozen other shopping centers in Maine, did not immediately respond to inquiries from Mainebiz.
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