As this week goes on these registers in the Carrollton Kroger store will be moved to the new part of the store that has been completed, so that the old part of the store can be gutted. When the project is completed in October Kroger will add 200 employees to its current 100. (Photo by Cliff Williams/Times-Georgian)
Construction began last June. When the entire rebuilding project is completed in October, the new Marketplace store will have nearly tripled in size, to 124,000 square feet, and will add about 200 new employees to the current work force of about 100.
Beginning Monday, workers will start to move the grocery shelves in the current 45,000-square-foot building into the recently completed building to the left of the current store.
“It will take us 11 days to move it all,” Kroger Unit Manager Randy Thurman said Thursday. “After it’s moved, all the store will be on the left side for six months while the current store area is demolished.”
He said Kroger doesn’t like to shut doors and intends to keep the store operating throughout the transition.
Thurman said about three aisles will be moved each day next week, and as they’re moved, a curtain will be put up to block out the vacated space. Access to the new area will be through a passage cut in the wall near the present deli area.
The new area includes a drive-through pharmacy window, which Thurman said will be open by Jan. 13. A gasoline fuel station is due to open on Feb. 1.
“We’re trying to inconvenience our customers as little as possible,” he said. “We’ll have people in front of the store with directories to help walk customers through.”
Thurman said that once all the current store items are relocated to the new building on the left, customers will begin entering through the new entrance to that building. He said all the present building will be fenced off and torn down, except for the support beams and roof. He said the rebuilding should be completed by mid-summer, which will complete phase two.
At the completion of phase two, the grocery items will be moved back into their original area and the building on the left will house a Fred Meyer Jewelry store, the pharmacy, a furniture shop, a clothing shop, Starbucks Coffee shop, a restaurant, a Little Clinic, Murray’s Cheese, additional checkout lanes, expanded natural foods section and deli-bake.
In the final phase of the construction, the new building will be completed in the back and on the right side of the current building, up to the tobacco shop.
Kroger has been in Carrollton for nearly 40 years. Its first store was located on Bankhead Avenue before moving to its current location on Highway 27 South in the Crossroads Shopping Center in 1987. He said Kroger likes its location and is committed to the area.
“Some of our associates have been with us more than 30 years and 20 of our managers live within six miles of the store,” he said. “We want to be part of the community.”
Kroger was started in 1883 by Barney Kroger in downtown Cincinatti, Ohio, with his life savings of $372. Today Kroger has 2,435 stores in 31 states, employing about 339,000 people, with annual sales of more than $90 billion, according to the company website.
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