There’s another Asian market,and a big one at that,coming to Westminster.
San Gabriel’s Hieu Tran has leased about 108,000 square feet for a market at 15440 Beach Blvd. in Westminster Plaza.
The 15-year lease is worth about $18 million.
Tran is set to compete with Little Saigon’s Tran family,no relation,which runs Little Saigon Supermarket in Westminster, A Chau supermarket in Fountain Valley and two Vanco Food markets in Garden Grove and Fountain Valley.
Hieu Tran’s Westminster Superstore is set to open in March at the site of a former Kmart.
Troy, Mich.-based Kmart Holding Corp. tried wooing Asian shoppers itself with Vietnamese fliers inside Nguoi Viet Daily News before its store closed in 2003.
Westminster Superstore plans to sell fresh food, groceries and other items and is set to take up about 70,000 square feet, according to project manager Huy Trieu. That’s double the size of many Asian markets in Orange County.
The remaining 35,000 square feet of space is set to be leased for stores, restaurants and service businesses, Trieu said.
This is Hieu Tran’s first venture into OC, which has the largest concentration of Vietnamese outside Vietnam. He’s spending about $5 million on the Westminster Superstore, which is about two blocks south of Westminster’s Little Saigon section.
The city of Westminster has been supportive, according to Trieu.
Westminster Plaza is in dire need of a facelift. The superstore could do much to revive the rundown center, which has suffered since Kmart closed.
But the superstore will have a lot of competition, beyond just from the Tran family’s stores. It also will compete with Buena Park-based Tawa Supermarket Inc.’s 99 Ranch Market stores in the area.
A few miles up the street on McFadden is another rival, Saigon City Marketplace.
Superstore’s Tran chose Westminster because of its proximity to the large Vietnamese population in the area. About 200,000 Vietnamese immigrants and descendents live in and around Little Saigon, which spans Westminster, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove and Santa Ana.
Westminster Superstore also hopes to appeal to everyday shoppers with fresh food, Trieu said. Even so, he said he expects most of the customers to be Asians.
The store plans to sell live fish, clams, lobsters and oysters, Trieu said. It also is set to carry Asian vegetables such as leeks, ginger and green onion.
Randy Dalby, a broker with Grubb & Ellis Co. who worked on the lease for Tran, said the store is expected to be its nicest one to date.
Tran has eight superstores: three in Southern California, three in Northern California and one in Las Vegas. His original store in San Gabriel caters to the city’s large Asian population.
