Kroger begins DFW expansion with Plano

The grocery race is heating up in the DFW ’burbs, as Kroger starts the first of its three new stores in Plano.

Construction on the new Kroger Marketplace on Coit Road at Highway 121 will start in late July and cost $10.5 million to build, according to a Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation filing. Kroger’s new Plano store will be located across from its store at 9700 Coit Road. The existing store will close when the new 120,000 square foot grocery opens in 2024. No other details are ready to be announced, a Kroger spokesperson said.

Kroger also plans to open new stores in Melissa and Fort Worth. The grocer operates more than 100 stores in North and East Texas and more than 200 stores total throughout the state.

A $25 billion merger between Kroger and Albertsons has yet to be finalized by the companies’ respective shareholders while they await approval from the Federal Trade Commision. If approved, the merger would make Kroger the second-largest retail chain in the country behind Walmart.

Other retail grocery companies, like H-E-B, Tom Thumb and Target, have been expanding across DFW as the region’s population continues to swell. Despite a slowdown in the final months of 2022, North Texas once again topped all the other major U.S. metros for commercial property deals, for the third year in a row. Still, the 2022 North Texas commercial real estate volume was down 15 percent from 2021′s record total of deals, according to MSCI.

The Dallas-Fort Worth area saw retail occupancy above 94 percent in 2022, the highest figure recorded since 1990, according to a report by Weitzman Group. Vacancies caused by the onset of the pandemic have been erased, and the market absorbed 1.7 million square feet in 2022, Weitzman reported.