La Junta Grocery Store Among Several Set to Close in Colorado

Anne Boswell Taylor
Sep 9
3 min read

Your choice of where to grocery shop will soon be one less in Southeast Colorado.

La Junta City Manager Michael Hart confirms that the Safeway in La Junta is one on a list to close, although no dates have been given as of the time of his post.

In a social media post, (listed below) Hart writes the city is saddened by the news to close the Safeway but adds that La Junta is a resilient community.

According to Safeway.com, there are approximately 102 store locations in Colorado.

In article on the Kroger company website it details that a merger in October of 2022 between Kroger and Albertsons would make them the largest grocery store chain with close to 5,000 stores in 48 states.

In the Business Journals, the FTC and several state attorneys general challenged the deal in February 2024, because they worried about antitrust concerns such as reduced price competition and weakened union bargaining power.

So according to this information, Kroger and Albertsons proposed selling up to 579 overlapping stores to C&S Wholesale Grocers and licensing the Albertsons and Safeway names in certain states , Colorado being one of them, as a remedy.

Lamar Mayor Kirk Crespin posted Tuesday, that Lamar Safeway will also be closing.

Crespin updated his social media post to say he has learned the store will be closing doors on November 7th, 2025.

In an email from Safeway, La Junta City Manager Michael Hart shared with Colorado News Your Way, the closure date for the La Junta Safeway will also be November 7th, 2025.

We reached out to the corporate office to verify which stores would be closing due to numerous social media posts stating that Walsenburg and Burlington were included in the closures. Heather Halpape from the company responded with the following message.

Anne,

The stores in Burlington and Walsenburg are not closing.

Below is a media statement that you can use.

Thank you,

Heather

As part of our ongoing commitment to operational excellence and customer-focused innovation, we’ve recently unified the Intermountain and Denver divisions into the newly formed Mountain West Division. This strategic consolidation is more than a structural change -- it’s a growth accelerator.

To fuel this growth, the Mountain West Division is taking several steps to integrate the team structures and store networks of the two former divisions. This includes Safeway closing 10 stores across Colorado, one in New Mexico, and one in Nebraska, all of which will cease operations on or before November 7, 2025.

We continuously evaluate the performance of our stores, and occasionally, after long and careful deliberation, it becomes necessary to make the difficult decision to close certain locations. We are working to place affected associates in nearby stores wherever possible.

Safeway has proudly served these communities for decades, and the decision to close these stores was not made lightly. With a focus on growth, these closures will enable us to continue investing in our store network and better align with evolving customer needs. Together, these changes position us to operate in new and innovative ways that foster customer loyalty and drive long-term success.

The following Safeway stores are closing on or before November 7, 2025