[UPDATE August 27, 2020: Amazon’s new grocery store concept is going to be called “Amazon Fresh”. Read about the new grocery store here.]
Amazon is opening one of its top-secret grocery stores in Westchester’s up-and-coming The Interchange at La Cienega redevelopment project, What Now Los Angeles (WNLA) uncovered Tuesday. It will take an already-built 28,000-square-foot shell that was originally supposed to house a Smart & Final. The City of Los Angeles earlier this year even issued a building permit for the regional grocer to construct its planned store in the development.
Smart & Final pulled out the redevelopment from Red Mountain Group Inc., which is an overhaul of La Cienega Triangle, because of missed delivery deadlines, Peter Spragg, senior managing director for Newmark Knight Frank, the firm overseeing leasing, Tuesday told WNLA. When asked about Amazon Grocery, Spragg would not comment and said Smart & Final’s replacement would be announced later in the year.
Amazon Grocery will open in the center as early as October or November of this year, joining co-anchor Marshall’s which debuted in July (the nearby Marshall’s in the Fox Hills Plaza on Bristol Parkway is now closed).
Situated on an 8.6-acre property, at the three-pronged intersection of La Cienega Boulevard, Centinela Avenue, and La Tierja Boulevard, Amazon Grocery will join a slew of new tenants including Chick-fil-A, Spectrum and Jersey Mike’s. Spragg said those tenants have all been given their respective spaces and are expected to open in The Interchange this fall, winter at the latest. Burger King and KFC, which were already at the site, will remain, and there are still commercial spaces available.
“It’s been a great piece of real estate given it’s at a prominent intersection,” Spragg said. “We’re getting rents that, for local businesses, would be a sticker shock.”
Amazon Grocery’s first-ever outpost is in Woodland Hills (which will be the test store for “Dash Cart”) and other SoCal locations are planned in North Hollywood, Porter Ranch, and in La Verne, just East of Los Angeles, the grocer is taking a portion of a Kohl’s for its new store. WNLA reached out to Amazon for comment but received no response by the time of this article’s publication.
