AURORA —A Safeway that closed in Aurora last month has residents and business owners in the area concerned. They say the Aurora Highlands Shopping Center is already in decline and will be defunct unless Safeway gives up the lease on the space and allows another grocer in.
“My business is down about 30 percent since they closed their doors,” said Mike Levett, who has owned the Bottle Barn liquor store next door for 11 years. “Every month since I’ve been there, our business has increased. I paid off the store at the end of last year, and my expectation was that this was going to be our year to really break out.”
Levett and a half dozen other small business tenants in the 130,000-square-foot shopping center at South Buckley Road and East Mexico Avenue say that business has slowed to a crawl since the 46,000-square-foot store and adjacent gas station were boarded up.
following a merger of Albertson’s and Safeway. Four of those stores were in Aurora.
Josefina Serrano opened Jesus Mexican Taqueria in the Aurora Highlands Shopping Center a year ago, and she said she’s concerned about keeping it afloat, especially since tenants all around her have been closing, and the Safeway space is not getting leased again.
There are about seven vacant storefronts in the center now, in addition to Safeway.
“There’s no more traffic or new people anymore,” Serrano said. “Everything is really dark all the time, and the windows are boarded up. I would like them to open another big, new store there to attract more shoppers.”
Bruce Shapiro of Arizona Partners Real Estate is one of the owners of the shopping center. His company has managed the property for 10 years, and he said they have been in negotiation with potential retail tenants for that site.
“We have some nationally recognized retailers that would like to be in the center, one of which is a grocer,” Shapiro said. “But Safeway is refusing to terminate their lease. They said they won’t do it unless we give them a grocery store exclusion because they are bent on making sure competition doesn’t enter the market.”
Safeway’s lease ends in April. Representatives of Albertson’s-Safeway say that relinquishing the space is not on the table.
“We’ve been in the Aurora community for a long time, and we understand that when stores close, we need to determine what the next steps are,” said Kris Staaf, spokeswoman for the Albertson’s LLC Denver Division. “We plan to sublet that space and the fuel center as quickly as possible.”
She said Albertson’s-Safeway is committed to maintaining the center by cleaning up graffiti, fixing the aging parking lot and cleaning up the storefronts.
Shapiro doesn’t think a sublet without a significant reinvestment in the site will be able to revive the center, which was built in 1978.
“We have budgeted $3.5 million to upgrade the center and the space that they formally occupied,” Shapiro said. “It’s run down right now because they moved in there 30 years ago and never touched it.”
Staaf said Albertson’s-Safeway is already in discussion with a potential sublease tenant, but she said it likely won’t be a grocer because an existing Albertson’s store is just down the street.
“We want to make sure that we’re taking care of all of our stores,” Staaf said. “We’ve got some exciting plans for that store.”
But some residents aren’t convinced.
Sunny Banka has lived about a half mile from the Aurora Highlands Shopping Center for the past 30 years. As a real estate agent for the past 36 years, she said she believes that unless another grocer opens up as the center’s anchor tenant, the center will not recover.
“If this is what Safeway is going to do to the people who supported their store for 30 plus years, why should we support the Albertson’s that’s just down the street?” she asked rhetorically.
Banka started a campaign two weeks ago to gather petitions to coax Albertson’s-Safeway away from their lease, and said she’s gaining support from neighbors who are fed up with the aging center.
“I know what a vacant, dilapidated building will do to a neighborhood,” Banka said. “It’s not good for the housing market in the area, it invites crime and it’s an eyesore — the first thing people see … is that boarded up gas station. It’s awful and we can’t let it continue.”
Megan Mitchell: 303-954-2650, mmitchell@denverpost.com or twitter.com/Mmitchelldp
