Fresh and Easy wants to open at closed Lincoln Park site

by Jeremiah Michaels

A new supermarket may be coming to replace the closed Albertsons at the west end of Clement Street. Fresh and Easy, an organic supermarket chain, is planning to open a store at 3231 Clement St., which has stood empty for the last two years.

The supermarket has applied for a permit to sell alcohol. As of late January, the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, an agency that licenses businesses in California to sell alcohol on its premises, had not issued a license to the supermarket. Fresh and Easy is replacing Albertsons, which opened in 2002 and closed in June 2006.

Albert DiPadova, an organizer with the Friends of Lincoln Park, said he is confident the new store would be a "positive thing" in that location.

DiPadova said he felt Albertsons failed to provide basic customer service, citing times when there were lines and only one cash register open. He also said the store did not have the upbeat vibe of Whole Foods or Trader Joes.

In February 2007, the San Francisco Examiner reported that Whole Foods might be moving into the old Albertsons site, which was originally a Safeway store. But that effort fell through.

The Albertsons closure was part of a district-wide spate of closures, with two Cala supermarkets being closed at 6333 and 4041 Geary Boulevard. Cala Foods is a Bay Area chain started by the Cala brothers in 1947. The Kroger Company purchased the chain from Ralphs in the '90s. According to a report done by the San Francisco Chronicle, Harley Delano, a former head of Cala Foods, bought the Cala Foods chain in 2006. Delano was the former president of Cala Foods and Bell Markets from 1990 to 1999.

In November of 2006, San Francisco voters approved Proposition G, which required large supermarket chains to endure a lengthy application process and review before being allowed to open its doors to the public. The law defined formula retail use in the city's Neighborhood Commercial Districts. According to smartvoter.org, formula retail is defined as a store that uses similar color schemes, themes, logos or storefronts. Formula retail stores are strictly prohibited in the Hayes-Gough and North Beach neighborhood commercial districts.

"I want the mom and pop stores and I like the mom and pop stores, but I can't afford the mom and pop stores," said Marco Cosado, 45, who works at Picture Machine Tattoos on Geary. "The little stores are more personal."

Fresh and Easy is owned and operated by Tesco. The new Fresh and Easy store does not appear on the company's Web site.

Fresh and Easy representatives were not available for comment as of presstime.

Tesco is a British supermarket chain that was started by Jack Cohen in London in 1919. According to its Web site, the grocery retailer has opened stores in Japan and China over the last eight years and entered the U.S. market in 2007. Last year, Tesco announced that it was suspending opening 18 of its Fresh and Easy stores in the Bay Area. Two of the stores are located in San Francisco, at Third Street and Carroll Avenue and Silver Avenue and Goettingen Street.