K mart to pair Square, Fare in Charlotte, N.C - American Fare hypermarket to share shopping center with Builders Square home improvement store

Discount Store News, June 6, 1988 by Richard C. Halverson

K mart to Pair Square, Fare in Charlotte, N.C.

CHARLOTTE, N.C.--On a rolling 34-acre site, K mart is planning to give new meaning to the one-stop-shopping concept by offering consumers the opportunity to buy their clothes, food, general merchandise--and home improvement materials at the same complex.

K mart is going to pair its second American Fare hypermarket with a new Builders Square home improvement center here, DSN has learned.

K mart often has paired a Builders Square with a discount store, and Wal-Mart has built several Sam's Wholesale Clubs next to its Discount City stores. But this would be the first match-up of a hypermarket with a home improvement center.

Crosland-Irwin Associates, the developers that own the 34-acre site on the southeast outskirts of Charlotte, "are in the process of selling the land to K mart," said Robert Mingle, an associate involved with the hypermarket project. Mingle declined to divulge any details of the deal.

Crosland applied April 1 for a zoning change on the site to shopping center from business and industrial use, said Laura Simmons, a zoning officer for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Commission. Simmons said she expects the Charlotte City Council to approve the change at its June 20 meeting.

K mart submitted plans to erect a total of 320,000 square feet of buildings on the site, Simmons said: 217,400 square feet for an American Fare hypermarket, 96,000 square feet for a Builders Square and 6,000 square feet for an unidentified outbuilding.

K mart expects to open its first American Fare hypermarket--late this year or early in 1989--in the Atlanta suburb of Stone Mountain. Grading work has been completed and foundation work is underway, said Walter Fields, land development manager for the Charlotte Planning Commission.

As with the Atlanta store, the Charlotte hypermarket will be a joint venture between K mart and Bruno's. Birmingham, Ala.-based Bruno's is a $1 billion chain of 111 supermarkets known more for upscale food than rock-bottom prices.

K mart holds its customary controlling 51 percent interest in the venture with Bruno's holding the remaining 49 percent. The same ownership ratio held when K mart bought the Makro membership warehouse club in March and when K mart set up an Australian K mart subsidiary in 1979.

To support the proposal at a public hearing held May 16, K mart sent Richard S. Niedzwiecki, its chief of architecture and shopping center construction.

Niedzwiecki disclosed no details of the interior configuration of the hypermarket, Simmons said. Instead he testified in general about the testified in general about the one-stop-shopping center K mart intends to build and the European background of the hypermarket concept, she said.

Nor did he say anything about a construction time frame, said a The Business Journal of Charlotte reporter, who covered the hearing.

The architect displayed an artist's rendering, Fields said, that indicates the store will be decorated in soft pastels and feature an extremely high, exposed ceiling. With a store that large, a low ceiling would be depressing, Fields said.

(The architect's description of the proposed hypermarket resembles the Carrefour hypermarket in Philadelphia with muted pastels and cavernous, open girder ceilings.)

American Fare will devote about 40 percent of the selling space to food and food-related products, Fields said Niedzwiecki testified, and the balance of 60 percent to general merchandise. The architect said K mart has selected several other markets for hypermarkets but failed to name them, Fields said.

A K mart spokeswoman confirmed that Niedzwiecki testified at the zoning hearing, but he was unavailable for further comment.

K mart operates a total of six discount stores in Charlotte, including four within an eight-mile radius of the planned hypermarket site at the junction of East Independence Boulevard and Sardis Road North.

One of these is 2.5 miles away, said its manager.

Will American Fare cannibalize sales of his store?

"Not at all," he replied. "We'll set each other off."

A new PACE Membership Warehouse is scheduled to open in September across Independence Boulevard from the hypermarket site in the Crown Point project, a combination business park and shopping center that covers 206 acres. Brendle's has been operating a catalog showroom in Crown Point for about seven months. A Sam's Wholesale Club is operating about half a mile away, but Wal-Mart so far hasn't entered the market with its discount stores or its own hypermarket, Hypermarket USA.

Charlotte will be a new market for K mart's Builders Square home center chain.