Closures: Owners operate 13 area stores

Binkowski said the change was in response to declining sales at the Norman and Yukon stores, which he attributed to job losses in the energy industry. Customers that were buying Hamburger Helper were still shopping, but instead were buying cheaper macaroni and cheese.

Sales over the past few months proved the concept was a hit with customers and sales are up at both stores, Binkowski said.

The change involves no change in those working at the stores, but displays and use of space will change. Less time will be spent changing prices day to day, he said.

Family-owned Buy For Less was founded in 1988, and operates 13 grocery stores in the Oklahoma City metro area. Buy For Less also operates stores in the Oklahoma City area under the Super Mercado and Uptown Grocery Co. brands.

Buy For Less made the decision to close its Hefner Road location after it opened a nearby Uptown Grocery location in The Village, Binkowski said.

“With the addition of the new Uptown Grocery at May and Britton, it was always our intent to close the Buy For Less on Hefner and consolidate to the one new location,” Binkowski said. “However, when the opening of the Uptown Grocery was delayed, we were reluctant to close the Hefner location so we could continue to service The Village.”

The Village struck a deal with Buy for Less in 2014 for $350,000 in incentives from a city tax increment finance district to offset land acquisitions costs for the new Uptown Grocery. Buy For Less also gets 25 percent of the new sales tax revenues generated from the development for up to 12 years, according to its deal with the Village.

While The Village Uptown Grocery experienced several construction delays, mostly due to bad weather in 2015, the store opened in February and seems to be doing well, said Bruce Stone, city manager for The Village.

We can tell by the sales tax receipts that they are doing well, and of course it’s a really significant addition to our city,” Stone said. The Village’s sales tax revenue is already up nearly $300,000 over the previous year since the opening of the new store, he said.

Stone confirmed Buy for Less told The Village that it planned to close its Hefner Road location once it opened the new Uptown Grocery.

Closing the 2500 N Pennsylvania store, the second store the company opened, was a business decision, the company said.

“After extensive negotiations with the landlord, we have been unable to reach an agreement to make necessary improvements to the store, which is essential to meet the standards of our other stores and our customer expectations,” Binkowski said. president of the Alliance, and city finance officials is set for Wednesday. The deadline on the ultimatum is Thursday.

“His (Pettis) response, I believe, has to do with the frustration over things he wants to get done — things we want to get done,” Susan Binkowski said Monday. “It can be difficult to be sympathetic to someone else when we don’t understand the circumstances they face. And I don’t understand the concerns that can arise in the political conversation. I’m not sure there has been good dialogue about the progress that has been made and the good things that have happened the past couple years.”

So the two sides will meet. And what happens if the two sides can’t come to a resolution? Susan Binkowski has no answer.

Pettis and Binkowski were both ready to do everything possible when they first announced the city would create a tax increment district and provide other assistance to the Binkowskis. Hank Binkowski runs the grocery operation. Susan Binkowski runs development and real estate for the chain.

The couple bought the 18,000-square-foot grocery five years ago, not long after leasing the store and turning into a Buy For Less. Comparable modern grocery stores top 50,000 square feet. Yet the NE 23 store, built in 1962, is the largest grocery in northeast Oklahoma City, which is classified as a food desert by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The Binkowskis visited with Pettis and city economic development officials. The plan to replace the store with a new grocery grew to a $30 million shopping center, King’s Crossing, that would include a pharmacy, medical clinic, technical school, shops, restaurants and housing.

Pettis was still in his first term as the Ward 7 councilman and he was set to see a dream become a reality that started 20 years earlier with then Councilwoman Willa Johnson.

“This is history,” Pettis said as the deal was announced. “This is absolutely history. This shows development can happen within the inner-city of Oklahoma City.”

For Pettis, King’s Crossing represented a big step forward for his community. The timeline, meanwhile, suggested the new store would be open by the end of his first term. Susan Binkowski, meanwhile, approached the project like an excited minister eager to heal the wounds of decades of discrimination brought about by retailers who located anywhere but in the black part of town.

“Food is our ministry,” Binkowski said. “Food is the place where community starts. People bond when they break bread together. We have the supreme blessing of being ‘community makers’ because community happens when food shows up. And that is our dream for this location.”

The site was far more contaminated than expected. Such surprises were not unprecedented in a public-private venture.

Susan Binkowski promised to start construction just a few months after King’s Crossing was announced. Three years later, a construction start seems as elusive as ever.

The Binkowskis have a diary of the work done to date since the project was announced in March 2013. The notes show a slow but steady effort to consolidate ownership of not just the shopping center but adjoining blighted and undeveloped areas. They spent $3.8 million on acquisition. They spent $1.5 million on architects and engineers, asbestos removal and demolition of blighted buildings to the east and north of the shopping center.

Notes show the Binkowskis’ communications bouncing between the city’s permit office, occasionally the Alliance, and until last March, Pettis.

It was last March that Pettis announced victory on another big goal — convincing Charlie Shadid, longtime owner of the Northeast Shopping Center — to redevelop the blighted property and bring in retail, including another grocery.

The Binkowskis didn’t know about the deal, also involving public money, or plans for a grocery until reading about the project in

Words were exchanged. The Binkowskis saw a second grocery as threatening the performance of their plans for an Uptown Market. Pettis wanted economic revitalization throughout the northeast community.

As contamination and site-clearance costs escalated and plans were revised, Walgreens withdrew its interest from co-anchoring the project. The technical school withdrew as well.

Site plans and figures were revised. Meanwhile, Hank Binkowski was seeing a drop in sales at his stores in Norman and Yukon that he believed was linked to oil-field workers losing their jobs. He changed the stores to a new concept — Smart Saver — that lists products at wholesale price and then adds 10 percent at check out.

It’s a simpler process, with less labor and more product on display. The change, he said, was a hit with shoppers and a new study showed two more stores, one in southeast Oklahoma City and the other at NE 23, should be changed next.

“The study that was provided to us this year says that an Uptown Market would be a loss for us,” Susan Binkowski said. “What changed was the original tenants and partnerships that helped relieve the financial burden of an expensive building — a high labor building — evaporated.”

The rebranding was done last week and King’s Crossing, when built, was to be anchored by a new Smart Saver, not an Uptown Market. Pettis was not happy.

“The city has done everything we can to get it going,” Pettis said. “We have a developer who is over her head. We’re tired of this being on again, off again, and on again, and off again. They keep telling the community it will be an Uptown, and now they’re changing it to a Smart Saver. So it’s OK for Edmond to get an Uptown, for The Village to get an Uptown, but no, for northeast Oklahoma City, it’s now a Smart Saver.”

The Binkowskis respond that Smart Saver is not an insult, but rather an effort to best respond to the needs of their customers.

“We’ve highlighted produce, we’ve changed cases,” Hank Binkowski said. “We’ve changed almost the entire meat lineup. And all this was done just to buy us some more time before we build the new store. It is better lighted; it has new paint and a new brand.”

O’Connor is no stranger to tough redevelopment projects and has worked on deals ranging from redevelopment of the Skirvin Hilton Hotel, incentives that lured Bass Pro Shops to Lower Bricktown, and is currently overseeing efforts in Core to Shore and development of a convention hotel.

“I think we have to be open to considering the options,” O’Connor said. “Under one option, the city would buy all of the land the Binkowskis have. We would build the grocery store, similar with what we did with Bass Pro Shops. One very extreme option is we buy the property and the Binkowskis don’t develop any of it and we issue a request for proposals.”

She admits, however, that option would be difficult because the Binkowskis already own and operate a grocery at the corner and the city would want it to stay open until a new one is built.

Susan Binkowski said she welcomes the deadline and believes all sides will be relieved to come up with a resolution. O’Connor believes a deal still can be struck that will allow both sides to move forward and complete King’s Crossing.

“Doing these kinds of development deals is complicated and it does take a long time even in the best of circumstances,” O’Connor said. “I know the city is still committed to making something happen, and personally, I think the Buy For Less team is committed. I think it’s just been a difficult project.”