Vancouver’s only Whole Foods Market will close its doors in about two months. Employees told customers on Friday that the Whole Foods near 164th Ave and Mill Plain Blvd will shut down on or around Aug. 18, and will not be moving to a new location.
A store manager referred questions to the company’s media team, which later confirmed the closure in an email to the Columbian.
Anonymous tipsters who contacted The Columbian said employees at the store were notified of the closure at a meeting Thursday night. They said employees were told that Whole Foods has been seeking an alternate location for the Vancouver store but so far has been unable to secure one. Low customer traffic and rising rent costs were mentioned as contributing factors to the closure, as well as the upcoming end to the company’s current lease.
According to Clark County property records, the store building is owned by Tom Moyer Theaters, better known as TMT Development, a Portland company that owns several prominent buildings and properties including the Fox Tower and the recently built Park Avenue West tower in downtown Portland.
Most of the company’s properties are in Portland or elsewhere in the Willamette Valley in Oregon, according to a list on its website, but it does own two Washington properties: the Mill Plain Plaza shopping center where the Whole Foods is and the Orchards Plaza shopping center on Northeast 117th Avenue.
Comments have been closed.