Albertsons Companies, writing from Boise on December 11, 2024, said it had terminated its merger agreement with Kroger after injunctions issued the day before by the U.S. District Court in Oregon and the King County Superior Court in Washington. The same release lists Safeway among the banners Albertsons operates, and it gives a national store count as of September 7, 2024. It does not, on that page, publish an Arizona-only count. This note therefore does not invent one. What the termination does support is a narrower point lenders still make: a Safeway lease did not become a Fry's lease, and a planned change of operator is not something to assume. Fry's remains the Kroger division described on Fry's-anchored centers.
The same banner can sit in two different collateral positions. Shopping Center Business on February 14, 2025 described Sterling Grove Shopping Center in Surprise as developed in 2023, grocer-anchored by a Safeway, with a Safeway fuel station, McDonald's, Starbucks, and Taco Bell, and fully leased. The article gives the center as 106,000 square feet and the Safeway as 63,290 square feet. The financing dollar in that article is omitted here. The Safeway, in that description, is the anchor tenant of the center, so the lease should be part of what a buyer or a lender is underwriting. That city page is Surprise grocery-anchored retail.
Mountain Ranch is the opposite fact pattern
Hanley Investment Real Estate Advisors' February 4, 2026 release describes Mountain Ranch Marketplace as a 49,683-square-foot neighborhood center in Goodyear, at the northwest corner of Estrella Parkway and Elliot Road, shadow-anchored by Safeway. The release lists tenants not included in the sale, and Safeway is on that list, along with McDonald's, Taco Bell, Walgreens, and Chase Bank. The center itself was described as originally built in 2009 with additional construction in 2024. Sale price, store rankings, and demographic claims in the release are not repeated. A lender on the shops is depending on a Safeway that does not pay rent to the borrower. Parking, access, and who maintains the drive aisles live in a reciprocal easement, not in a Safeway lease the borrower can amend. That national pattern is shadow-anchored retail. The city write-up is Goodyear grocery-anchored retail.
Choosing between those two Safeway stories is the whole of this page. Sterling Grove is an in-line anchor inside a 2023 center. Mountain Ranch is traffic from a store outside the shops. Arizona grocery-anchored centers holds the statewide comparison. A refinance of a leased Safeway center belongs with Arizona refinance and, if the paper is permanent, life company or Arizona bank. A shadow center with shop rollover is often a CMBS or bridge discussion instead.
Sources for an in-line Safeway versus a shadow Safeway
| Source | When it fits |
|---|---|
| Life Company | A Safeway lease inside the center, as at the Surprise property, is the life-company shape. The shadow store in Goodyear is not the same lease. |
| Bank | Banks will ask which Albertsons banner is on the lease and whether a change-of-control clause woke up during the merger fight. |
| CMBS | Conduits often see shadow grocery as shop income plus an easement, not as a grocer credit tenant. |