The morning of Feb. 19, shoppers were lined up out the door of the retail center on the corner of Southeast 56th Street and East Lake Sammamish Parkway. Many had grabbed baskets and carts to be at the ready. Others milled about and chatted up the staff at the welcome booth, set up on a card table beside the parking lot. Two men, Josh Immordino and Justin Harvey, passed the time with games of cribbage.
It was probably the most foot traffic the old Albertsons building had seen in the more than six years since the grocery store announced its closure. The building remained perennially vacant during that time, with the exception of short-term leases to the Spirit Halloween company during the fall. Complicating matters was the fact that property owner Merlon Geier Partners had inherited an agreement that barred them from leasing to certain grocery competitors, such as Kroger or Walmart, until 2052. MGP wound up halving the roughly 50,000-square-foot building into two retail spaces.
Inside the store, more than 60 new Value Village employees gathered around Savers Inc. CEO Ken Alterman for a pre-opening ceremony pep talk, while city officials and corporate administrators awkwardly made small talk nearby. Alterman reminded the employees to relax, that first-day hiccups were normal.
Some of the employees made last minute adjustments within the aisles and aisles of clothing. Two days earlier, the store and the merchandise had been a mostly empty space and a pile of donations, respectively.
They went outside and began the opening ceremony.
“I think you’re going to be shocked when you go inside, especially if you were here Tuesday,” Alterman said, addressing shoppers. “The merchandising is extraordinary.”
The store is the 331st owned by Savers Inc., and the 200th in the United States. It’s the fourth in the company’s Eastside backyard. Savers’ corporate office is located in Bellevue and it had previously opened Value Village locations in Redmond, Kirkland and Woodinville.
The company’s Savers stores — known as Value Village in the Pacific Northwest — are private for-profit thrift operations. However, each store partners with nonprofit organizations to provide financial support, typically through clothes donated to the nonprofit that Savers stores then buy up at a bulk rate.
Value Village Issaquah is primarily partnered with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Puget Sound.
Those funds will help Big Brothers Big Sisters pay for case managers and one-on-one mentors for kids at risk of dropping out of school, CEO Amy Mack said.
“Every 26 seconds in this country, a child drops out of school,” she said.
Value Village’s Issaquah store is also partnered with the Issaquah Schools Foundation, the Issaquah Food Bank, Eastside Baby Corner and Northwest Center.
