There’s a surprise bidder in bankrupt grocery chain Haggen’s auction to shed most of the Albertsons stores it bought in its ill-fated expansion bid: Albertsons.
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Albertsons is bidding on 95 Haggen stores out West. Albertsons was required to sell 146 stores to Haggen a year ago before the Albertsons-Safeway merger was approved by federal regulators.
Haggen’s bankruptcy could result in the sale of every last one of its stores, according to documents filed in U.S. District Bankruptcy Court in DE on Monday.
The bankruptcy auction is happening this week in Los Angeles.
Albertsons’ starting bid for Haggen’s Northeast Fourth Street Street location in Renton is $1.7 million, while its opening offer for the First Avenue South store in Burien is $1.
As reported previously, Haggen filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in September, nine months after acquiring and converting the spun-off stores.
The Oregon Haggen stores on the auction block Wednesday are a mixture of operating and shuttered locations in Klamath Falls, Eugene, Ashland, Grants Pass, Baker City and the Portland suburbs. And Commerce’s Smart & Final Stores Inc. aims to claim Diamond Bar and Burbank. Roxy’s Market, a small-scale natural foods store with two locations in Colorado and Montana, bid $75,000 on Santa Barbara’s Cliff Drive store. The grocer already closed 27 stores from an earlier phase of closures. The Foothill Boulevard Haggen in San Luis Obispo and the Los Osos Haggen are included in the auction, but have no baseline bids posted.
Several grocers placed baseline bids on Central Coast Haggen locations.
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Haggen has yet to release a statement on this latest development.
