Stater Bros.' Inland-Area Push

The new Stater Bros. will be a 44,000-sf store in the 31-acre Falcon Ridge Town Center, on Summit Avenue east of the I-15 Freeway. It is scheduled to open in March and will be the latest of a series of new stores the company has announced or completed in the Inland Empire, where Stater Bros. also is building a new, $200 million distribution center. The new center, as reported on GlobeSt.com in March, will consolidate the supermarket's distribution operations and headquarters on 160 acres in a nearly 2.2-million-sf, $200-million project at AllianceCalifornia, a development of Texas-based Hillwood Investments at the former Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino. The new facility, which is expected to be completed in about two years, will replace eight existing smaller distribution facilities primarily located in and around Colton and Redlands.

The new Fontana store will feature full service meat and seafood departments, a hot service deli, a bakery featuring artisan breads and a range of other items, an expanded produce department, a flower department, a pharmacy and a bank. Besides the new Fontana store, Stater Bros. also has announced new stores for Beaumont, scheduled to open Nov. 17; Wildomar, scheduled to open in January; and Adelanto, scheduled to open in June. The stores are being constructed by Stater Bros. Development, which serves as the general contractor for the chain. Stater Bros., founded in 1936 in the Inland Empire community of Yucaipa, is the largest privately owned supermarket chain in Southern California. It operates 158 supermarkets, with 89 of them in the Inland Empire and the remainder in Los Angeles, Orange, Kern and San Diego counties.