‘Super’ Store Planned

Vons Grocery Co. is planning an $8-million rehabilitation of a shuttered Garden Grove discount store for a “super” supermarket that officials say will be unique in size and scope in Southern California.

With a 55,000-square-foot sales floor, the store, to be called Vons Pavilion, will be three times larger than an average supermarket and is expected to attract customers from an eight-mile radius.

The market chain hopes to lure shoppers with additional services including a seafood area with large tanks for live fish, a full-service butcher shop, florist, automatic teller machine for banking, pharmacy, bakery, tortilla shop, small pizza parlor, ice cream shop, delicatessen and demonstration kitchen. Vons officials declined to elaborate further, saying that plans for the large facility are still being developed.

The new store will be located in an abandoned Zodys discount department store on Chapman Avenue in one of Orange County’s oldest strip shopping centers.

Vons, with annual gross sales of about $2.5 billion, is one of California’s largest supermarket chains. The El Monte-based company operates 171 stores statewide.

The renovation of to the Zodys building, which has been vacant since December, would be the first phase of a comprehensive rehabilitation of the entire shopping center, said George L. Tindall, Garden Grove’s assistant city manager.