Empty anchor stores in Phoenix leave ‘food desert’ and no pharmacy
Published 10:00 am Saturday, May 16, 2026
Two large businesses at the north entrance to Phoenix have been vacant for months; contents of decades-old Ray’s Market liquidated at auction last week
Nearing six months since the January announcement that his city’s only grocery store would close its doors, Phoenix Mayor Al Muelhoefer admitted recently that he’s striking out when it comes to luring a new supermarket to his beloved town.
Contents of the old Ray’s Food Place at 735 North Main Street were liquidated May 7 by Michigan-based Grafe’s auction company. The auctioneer listed the contents of the store in 354 separate lots, including everything from refrigeration units and shelves to cash registers and bakery displays via online auction with a video posted to social media showing the contents remaining inside the store.
Officially shuttered in late February, the store was run for decades by Medford-based C&K Market Inc., which cited difficult realities facing local grocers as reason for the closure. The company closed its Ray’s Food Place location in Drain about the same time.
Surveying the empty Ray’s Food Place parking lot and an empty nearby former Rite-Aid store one recent afternoon, Muelhoefer shook his head as he looked toward an apartment complex being constructed just north of the empty grocery store.
Closure of Ray’s, he noted, was more heavily felt by the community. Rite Aid — which “at least provided some basic grocery items,” the mayor said — closed in October before the loss of Ray’s.
“We’ve got people who don’t drive, who were walking here to get their groceries, and now they have to get on the bus to go to Walmart or down to Ray’s in Talent,” Muelhoefer said, noting that housing being rebuilt following the 2020 Almeda Fire will inevitably boost the town’s population, making the loss of a local market even more impactful.
“We have apartments going in nearby and we’ll have people moving into Royal Oaks and Pacific Flats and then two more affordable housing complexes coming … in a town with no grocery store.”
According to Jackson County property records, the Rite Aid property was purchased in November, one month following the store’s closure. The company announced closure of all Oregon pharmacy locations last June due to bankruptcy restructuring with actual closure occurring four months later.
The 15,000-square-foot building, at 636 N. Main St., was purchased for $1,050,000 by a Michigan-based company and registered under 636 LLC, and is currently being offered for lease through a local commercial real estate company.
As to the vacant Ray’s, which measures more than 35,000 square feet, Muelhoefer produced a list of more than a dozen companies he’s contacted about opening inside the old grocery store or even at an alternate location in the town. Local companies, he said, cited a range of reasons for being unable to expand in the current business market, while national chains cited issues with population density or other variables.
“Citizens talk to me all the time about our food desert and the need for a store,” Muelhoefer said. “I tell them to be patient but it’s very frustrating.”
According to the USDA Economic Research Service (ERS), a food desert is a low-income area in which a substantial number of residents live far from a supermarket or large grocery store.
Muelhoefer said he was unsure of future plans for the Ray’s building, which does not appear to be listed for sale and is part of a larger complex. He said he believed C&K Market had a remaining lease but was unsure of specific details. Calls and emails to Medford-based C&K Market Inc. were not returned.
According to Jackson County property records, San Diego-based S&P 500 real estate investment trust Realty Income Corporation purchased the building for $2.4 million in 2003. The single building and surrounding parking lot appear to be divided as three separate tax lots. Muelhoefer suggested the oversized building could be redeveloped into multiple businesses.
Calls to Realty Income Corporation this week by the Rogue Valley Time were not returned. Between the U.S. and Europe, the company boasts more than 15,500 properties in industries including retail, industrial and agricultural holdings, and it partners with entities such as 7-Eleven, Lowe’s and Chipotle.
Muelhoefer said having two large anchor businesses standing empty near the city’s freeway entrance is a concern for city officials. He surmised Ray’s higher prices and the sometimes expired shelf life of food items were a deterrent for residents who had other options, likely leading to reduced sales and eventual closure, and hoped an affordable option for the city’s low income and elderly residents can be found.
“A lot of the community said, ‘Well we aren’t surprised it’s closed,’” Muelhoefer said.
“They said they wanted something better for Phoenix. Now we have to figure out what that is,” the mayor said. “It’s definitely a critical need in our community right now.”
Reach reporter Buffy Pollock at 458-488-2029 or buffy.pollock@rv-times.com. Follow her on Twitter @orwritergal.