Groups are developing plans for shops, offices and a hotel in the historic building that will be a transportation hub.

By Jeffrey Leib The Denver Post

Varying visions for revitalizing Union Station in Denver’s Lower Downtown have emerged as RTD maps out a competitive process for selecting a developer to renovate the historic structure.

That renovation is part of a broad array of transit improvements that will make the station, and the area surrounding it, a $488 million transit hub for the Regional Transportation District. The broader redevelopment includes a new light-rail platform, an underground regional bus terminal and a multitrack commuter-rail platform just outside the west doors of the station.

A private entity, Union Station Neighborhood Co., is the master developer for the entire 30-acre transit district that surrounds the station, the bus terminal and the rail platforms, which will serve RTD’s FasTracks trains, including the $1.1 billion line to Denver International Airport. The district includes more than 4 million square feet of planned mixed-use commercial and residential development, and last week, USNC unveiled its proposal for restoring commercial use of Union Station.

It calls for a major renovation of the large open train room, with a restaurant; new waiting-room amenities; new locations for Amtrak’s ticketing and baggage services; and an information kiosk to aid travelers and visitors.

USNC also is proposing to develop a walk-through food market in the building’s south wing, with stalls featuring the goods of local purveyors, much in the manner of Seattle’s Pike Place Market or Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal Market.

The group’s plan for Union Station includes about 8,800 square feet of separate restaurant space in the building’s north wing and about 25,000 square feet of leasable office space on the station’s upper floors. “It’s a relatively simple vision of what this place should be,” said USNC’s Frank Cannon. “It’s the tenants you procure and how you execute it. We believe we have the right vision and team to execute it.”

Earlier this year, a separate business group, led by Sage Hospitality’s Walter Isenberg and longtime LoDo developer Dana Crawford, proposed an alternate plan for redeveloping Union Station that calls for putting a 100-room boutique hotel in the building along with a restaurant and possibly other retail uses.

Their plan calls for affiliating the hotel in the train station with the Sage-owned Oxford Hotel on 17th Street, a block away.

In briefings last week to RTD’s board of directors and the Denver Union Station Project Authority (DUSPA), RTD’s Bill Sirois said the transit agency plans next month to begin a public process of soliciting formal proposals from any group that wants to redevelop the station.

While DUSPA is overseeing the nearly half-billion-dollar redevelopment of the entire Union Station area, RTD has retained the right to select the group that will redo the station itself. After an initial solicitation next month aimed at identifying groups with a serious interest and adequate financial capability for revitalizing Union Station, RTD plans to request more detailed proposals from them in August, and it will evaluate those submissions during the fourth quarter of this year, Sirois said.

The transit agency hopes to select a winning team to develop the station by next March, he said. “We’ve heard from stakeholders that they want to see creative, competitive ideas.”

Supervalu to open 160 new hard discount supermarkets by 2012

Supermarket conglomerate Supervalu plans to open 160 new Save-A-Lot discount grocery stores by March 2012. The company sees significant expansion potential in the brand, which caters to households with annual incomes of $45,000 or less and serves densely populated urban markets as well as rural communities, says president and CEO Craig Herkert.

Supervalu has opened 92 new Save-A-Lot stores in the past year, the most in the brand’s history. Approximately 50 percent of those stores are licensed to independent owner-operators, demonstrating an ownership model that Herkert says is unique in the discount grocery format and serves as a strong point of competitive differentiation.

Supervalu will spend between $700 and $750 million to open the new stores and renovate some existing locations, and will be looking particularly to Western states for new markets, he said. “We are also aggressively targeting food deserts, where there is a strong unmet need,” he said on the company’s earnings call.

For its fiscal year ended Feb. 28, Supervalu posted net sales of $37.5 billion and a net loss of $1.51 billion, compared to net sales of $40.6 billion and net earnings of $393 million in fiscal 2010. The decline in earnings was due in part to store closures and the sale of a logistics division that occurred in 2010, the company said. It closed about 80 underperforming stores during the period. Same-store sales fell 6 percent in 2011 and Supervalu expects them to range from negative 2.5 percent to negative 1.5 percent in 2012.

Supervalu operates 4,294 stores, including 1,114 traditional grocery stores including the Albertson’s banner; 1,280 discount Save-A-Lot stores of which 899 are operated by licensee owners; and 1,900 independent stores serviced primarily by the company's traditional food distribution business.

Compiled by the staff of Shopping Centers Today. © April 15, 2011 International Council of Shopping Centers.