Development/Redevelopment

Walmart is recruiting a new team of managers and buyers that will focus exclusively on its smaller-format Neighborhood Markets, according to a published report.

Employee-owned WinCo Foods, LLC opened three new discount supermarkets yesterday -- two in the greater Salt Lake City, Utah, market and a third in Hemet, Calif. -- each measuring approximately 94,000 square feet and employing about 225 associates.

United Supermarkets has bought 15 acres near Ft. Worth, Texas’ Alliance Airport, with plans to build a 200,000-square-foot distribution center to serve 16 locations in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Abilene and Wichita Falls.

Interior construction has begun on a fresh food-focused grocery store adjacent to the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, with a Jan. 15 target grand-opening date.

Sprouts Farmers Market will debut its third Austin, Texas, location in Rollingwood on Oct. 16 at the Mira Vista Shopping Center, and will open a fourth area store in Great Hills this coming January.

Stater Bros. this week completed the relocation to its new state-of-the-art corporate offices and Norton distribution center in San Bernardino, Calif., with the opening of its new 155,000-square-foot support services building.

“America’s Drive-Thru Grocer,” Swiss Farms, which has introduced a regional franchising program with the aim of selectively expanding around its corporate base in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New York and New Jersey, has awarded its first franchise, to John Betz & Associates.

WinCo Foods this week opened a new distribution center in its hometown of Boise, Idaho, as a platform for the grocer’s planned growth -- which could bring its store count up from 67 to 84 by 2011, according to published reports.