I just bypassed an Albertson’s yesterday in favor of the WinCo across the street. Turns out, i’m probably not the only one making that decision. That store – at 1350 N.E. 122nd Ave. (along with a second PDX store at 4140 S.E. 82nd Ave) will be closing by September, according to an announcement Friday ^[1]. Also closing: a Beaverton store at 1295 N.W. 185th Ave, and two more down in Salem.

(I’d kind of predicted the closure in this earlier post ^[2] asking where people grocery shopped – Albertson’s never came up, although many other stores did.)

I have to admit that Albertson’s never crossed my radar much – first, I was put off by the annoying Patricia Heaton commercials, then irritated when their uptight corporate parent forbid the sale ^[3] of an issue of Seventeen magazine ’cause it had (gasp) illustrations of female genitalia in a health article meant to educate girls.

But the job losses – an estimated 700, according to the BizJournal article – sting nonetheless. And since this leaves only eight remaining Albertsons in PDX proper, how much longer can we expect to see the rest stay open?