Neighborhood leaders say they’ll welcome a Fiesta food store to East Dallas – if the Houston-based grocery store chain follows through with plans to move into the old Sears store on Ross Avenue.
Fiesta executives announced last month that the Sears site, which closed March 27, is among six stores that will be opened in Dallas in the next two years. But Fiesta president Donald Bonham told a City Hall news conference that his company wouldn’t move into the Sears store unless it was economically feasible to renovate the existing two-story, plus basement, building.
If company officials decide it can’t be turned into a grocery store, he said, they have 60 days to back out of the deal. Fiesta can’t afford, said Bonham, to tear down the building and start from scratch – something they were forced to do on West Jefferson Avenue in Oak Cliff.
A fiesta spokesman later declined to discuss the proposed budget for the renovation, as well as any timetable other than the 60-day limit. Fiesta officials did not receive the Sears store’s blueprints until a week after the announcement was made.
“My gut reaction is that grocery store people know what works in their stores, and they don’t like to do things that they know won’t work,” said architect Greg Lorie, the principal in the Lakewood Architectura firm. “They could probably do the renovation, but it may not be exactly what they want in one of their stores. They want lights and color, and the Sears store is dark. It was built for retail, not groceries.”
In fact, Fiesta has never turned a non-grocery store building into a grocery store in its 21-year history, although it has purchased other grocery store buildings and converted them to Fiestas.
Still, Houston architect Leroy Hermes of Hermes & Reed, Architects, who works with Fiesta on its store design, is ready to take on the project.
“As soon as I walked into the store, I could see the possibilities,” he said, describing a store with its front entrance near the spot where the garden center is located. “We can make the interior look like a grocery store. The question is whether we can make the exterior not look like a Sears store.”
Several real estate developers and architects said the chain will face a number of handicaps in turning the 247,900-square foot Sears building into a grocery store.
• Asbestos. Federal law requires that any asbestos in the Sears building be removed before renovation. That could add a minimum of $200.000 to the renovation price tag.
• The size of the building. Most Fiestas are 35,000 to 65,000 square feet in size. The Sears’ street-level floor, where the grocery store would be located, contains more than 80,000 square feet. The store also has a basement, which Fiesta is considering for a bakery, and a second floor, which the chain may lease out.
• Electrical improvements. Extensive work will probably be needed to upgrade the building’s electrical systems, which were not designed for the sort of industrial strength appliances – freezers, refrigerators and the like – required in a grocery store.
• Zoning approval. Hermes said his plan will almost certainly call for the closing of Hudson Street, the black-long road that separates the main store from the current auto center.
“Fiesta likes to build from the ground up, and not to renovate,” said Scott Coghlin, the director of property management and leasing for Clements, Realtors, in East Dallas. “I just don’t think they’re going to do it with this property.”
Neighborhood residents, many of whom feared that the Sears store would be torn down for a parking lot, or that it would sit empty after it closed, welcomed the news that Fiesta was planning to move in.
“What we wanted was for something to take Sears’ place that would create jobs in the community, and this will do that,” says Gary Lawler, the president of the Vickery Place Neighborhood Association, which borders the Sears store.
“And we wanted something that would fit into the neighborhood. I think the Fiesta will do those things. It will be a good use for the site.”
