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West Medford Safeway to go Age, falling sales doom store By DAVID PRESZLER Safeway will close its West Main Street store next month, dealing a blow to efforts to revitalize west Medford. Community advocates and residents said the store was valuable because it was close enough to residential neighborhoods for people without transportation to walk. "Now, I'll have to take the bus, I guess," said Tamy Contento, who doesn't have a driver's license and walked the block back to her Fourth Street home Monday afternoon with two grocery bags in each hand. "I don't know what I'll do." The store will close at 7 p.m. June 19. Its 40 employees will be offered jobs at other Safeway stores around the region. Safeway officials said the West Main Street store was too old and too small to meet the chain's current standards, and expanding was too costly and difficult. "We've been looking at our options for a number of years, said company spokeswoman Bridget Flanagan. "Primarily, this decision was based on the physical condition of the location." The store was built in 1963. Flanagan said the company hadn't yet decided what will become of the building itself. Declining sales at the store also contributed to the decision to leave, she added. The company looked for a new site to build on but couldn't find one in the area. "We looked diligently all over the immediate area," she said. "We hate to leave an area but there are just some times you have to balance the business side and the human element." Flanagan said the company has rebuilt stores when the location allowed for expansion, pointing to current projects in downtown Portland and Salem. But that just wasn't possible in west Medford. The closure comes just six months after Safeway opened a large, new store across town in Crater Lake Plaza. Safeway's other Medford location also is on the east side, in the Medford Center. Safeway's departure will leave Sherm's Thunderbird as the only full-sized grocery store nearby for many west Medford residents. An Albertson's is being built on the corner of Jacksonville Highway and Ross Lane, but isn't scheduled to open until this fall. And those stores aren't that close for residents who now walk to Safeway. "We're very concerned about losing it," said Gigi Michaels of the West Medford Community Coalition. "It's unique in that it's right in the middle of the residential area. It's walking distance for many people. "There are low-income families that live around the neighborhood that don't always have a vehicle," she said. "Having it right there in the middle of the community is a valuable asset." Michaels said she had heard talk of the store's closure for some time but hoped that it would be remodeled and expanded rather than shut down. "It's not just a store to go buy your groceries -- you see your neighbors and talk to them," Michaels said. "It'll be a big loss." Shane Jones grew up on West Eighth Street -- just behind the store -- and still lives in the neighborhood. He worked as a box boy there as a teenager and has known some of the checkers by name for years. "We were over here every day," he said Monday as his sister shopped, "sometimes, a couple of times a day for Mom." Jones said the store will be greatly missed, especially by people living in adult foster care nearby and by seniors in the neighborhood. Flanagan said Safeway didn't want to leave, but staying just didn't make sense. "These are very painful, heart-wrenching decisions for us," she said. Today's Business Index Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA