Quote Originally Posted by JerzeeGrlinOKC View Post
I sure hope you're right stlokc, and you're right, it is a lousy reason on its own, but I just have a feeling its another tick against us. I've become discouraged in general. When we can't even keep Albertson's here and have to beg borrow cheat and steal to get a WF to even consider opening one store, when their headquarters are 6 hours down the road and it seems every other city has one; when I see a map like that, I honestly just say "forget it". I am surprised about Texas though to be honest, since the big cities have such a healthy-support for the upscale or trendy grocery concept. Plus I'm sure our liquor laws don't help (but are NOT the only reason). I don't know much about it, but sometimes I think the grocery distribution lobby in OK also has something to do with this issue, too.

Overall: everyone on this board has speculated for the reasons why we can't attract national upscale grocery chains, but nobody can agree with certainty on the overall cause. I'll air on the side of pessimism and say I just doubt we'll get a TJ any time soon.
Albertson's closed all over the country and pretty much have only stayed open in a few select markets like Dallas, their closing had more to do with their company being leveraged to the hilt and competition than it had to do with markets. HEB down here pretty much drove them out of Central and South Texas, they couldn't come close to competing and all of them closed in the Austin area. I know my dad wishes HEB would open up there after going to the stores down here.

I've always wondered why Safeway hasn't come back into the state or Kroger's hasn't moved in. My sister went to Kroger most of the time when she lived in Little Rock, we have Safeway down here under the Randall's name, in DFW they operate under the Tom Thumb name.