The oldest Carrs grocery store, a landmark near downtown Anchorage since the 1950s, will shut its doors in the coming weeks, a Carrs-Safeway official confirmed Tuesday.
The planned closure of the store and pharmacy at 1340 Gambell St. will leave a hole in the neighborhood of Fairview as community advocates are trying to revitalize the area, said James Thornton, president of the Fairview Community Council.
The shutdown also raises questions about access to a grocery store and pharmacy for a neighborhood where many people walk and don’t own vehicles, he said. Fairview, a diverse neighborhood home to many low-income residents, was once the center of the Black community in Anchorage.
“It’s devastating,” Thornton said. “The neighborhood needs this primary source of food, especially those that don’t have vehicles. It’s their only way to get food and medicine in a lot of cases.”
“It’s a very sad day,” said Richard Watts Jr., who began his decades-long career at Carrs working at the Gambell store in 1964 as a box boy — a bagger today — and later managed the store.
The Gambell store is unique among other Carrs stores in Anchorage because it’s so central to the people in the Fairview neighborhood, he said.
“The Carrs-Safeway on Gambell is the heartbeat of Fairview, so it’s almost like cutting the heart out of the community,” Watts said. “I just hope another store opens there after it closes.”
The Gambell location will close by May 10, said Sara Osborne, a Carrs-Safeway spokeswoman, in an email.
The 35 people employed by the store will have the option to transfer to surrounding stores, she said.
The store’s pharmacy will close on the same date as the overall operation, Osborne said.
The pharmacists and prescriptions at the Gambell Carrs will transfer to the Carrs pharmacy in the Midtown Mall at 2920 Seward Highway, Osborne said.
“Carrs-Safeway has been proudly serving Anchorage for decades, and the decision to close this store isn’t one we made lightly,” Osborne said.
“With our focus on growth, we continuously evaluate the performance of our stores, and occasionally it’s necessary to close locations that are not growing and are perpetually unable to meet financial expectations,” she said.
The Carrs-Safeway supermarket chain, a subsidiary of Albertsons, will continue to operate eight stores in Anchorage, Osborne said.
Workers at the store Tuesday said they could not comment on the planned closure.
Shoppers expressed shock and dismay.
Some said they drive in from other areas of Anchorage in part because they love shopping there, even though it has a reputation for attracting sometimes unsavory loiterers outside its doors.
They said the store is well-stocked with groceries compared to other Carrs locations, in part because it seems to draw fewer shoppers. They also praised the store’s employees for their longevity and often knowing customers by name.
“I just heard and it’s like, ‘What? Oh no!‘” said shopper Christina Anowlic of the closure, her arms full of fruits, vegetables and other items.
She said she grew up shopping at the store in the 1980s with her parents. She still returns to shop there occasionally, also from Government Hill where she lives.
“It’s kind of sad,” she said.
A historic grocery store
The Carrs store at Gambell opened in the 1950s.
It was located near the original Carrs that was opened by Laurence John “Larry” Carr in a Quonset hut in 1950, at 14th Avenue and Gambell Street.
Within a couple of years, Carr moved the store to the current location at 13th and Gambell. The building suffered a fire and was rebuilt, Watts said. The current 30,000-square-foot building was constructed in 1957, Anchorage municipal records show. With the land it sits on, it’s appraised by the municipality at $3.1 million.
When the store hired Watts in 1964, he became the first Black person to work in retail in Anchorage, he said. He was hired at the store after he and others, including his late parents, picketed the Carrs for not hiring Black people in public-facing positions, at protests organized by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Watts said his hiring opened the door for “other people of color” to be hired at other Anchorage stores.
The Carrs at Gambell for many years served as the administrative headquarters for the Carrs chain as it began to grow around the state, said Watts. He moved up through the ranks at Carrs to eventually become one of two district operation managers in Alaska, overseeing 15 stores. He retired in 2017 at the age of 70.
A blow to the store came in 2019, when Carrs opened in a new spot at the Midtown Mall, after closing at a different spot in the mall four years earlier, Watts said.
“That probably drew some customers from the Carrs on Gambell, and added to the red ink that was already there,” Watts said.
Thornton, with the Fairview Community Council, said he hopes the closure can somehow be averted.
“We’re going to do everything we can to fight this, because I don’t know how Fairview continues on without our Carrs store,” he said. “There’s a stigma associated with the store, but it’s the original Carrs store in Anchorage and a lot of people love it. And the people that run it have done a great job supporting the community over the years.”
This story has been republished with permission from the original at the Anchorage Daily News.