EVERETT — Wal-Mart has purchased the site of the former Top Foods supermarket near the Everett Mall for $10 million.
Snohomish County tax records show the property was purchased earlier this year by the Wal-Mart Real Estate Business Trust.
It’s not clear if the store would be a Wal-Mart Supercenter, a Sam Club’s warehouse or something else.
The development paperwork on file with the city details a project that would expand the existing building by around 20,000 square feet, for a total building size of more than 90,000 square feet.
The average size of a Walmart store is around 108,000 square feet, while a Sam’s Club or a Walmart Supercenter is typically 132,000 square feet, according to the retailer’s website.
But they can be smaller. The company recently announced plans to open a Walmart in a remodeled building in Encinitas, Calif., that will be 96,095 square feet.
The developer describes the project as “a free-standing discount superstore.”
The estimated start of construction is listed as 2012-2013 and the estimated date of completion is 2014-2015.
The Seattle-based company managing the project, PACLAND, has developed other Walmarts.
Top Foods, owned by Haggen Food, operated the 70,000-square-foot building for more than 26 years before closing earlier this year. It also closed a store in Beaverton, Ore., at the same time. Wal-Mart has purchased the Haggen Beaverton property.
Haggen officials said the market was highly competitive and it needed to close the locations. The decision came not long after WinCo opened a supermarket about a mile away near an existing Costco. Trader Joe’s is a short distance to the west of the site, located at 1605 SE Everett Mall Way.
The store employed about 50 people.
Efforts to reach Wal-Mart officials for comment Wednesday on their plans for the location weren’t successful.
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