Interesting Retail Times In South Charleston

The PopCulteer
July 17, 2026

We’ve got a short and locally-focused PopCulteer this week as your humble blogger heads out of town for the third consecutive weekend (I’m getting too old for this, but I don’t intend to stop). Today our topic is the new Kaiju-Kroger in South Charleston, and the surrounding Park Place shopping center. I’ve touched on both of these things before, HERE and HERE.

Super King Kamehameha Kroger

First…I’ve been to the new Kroger a few times now, and it’s pretty much what I expected. The grocery section is a wee bit larger than the Teays Valley Kroger. It’s nice, with a very impressive fancy-ass cheese counter, a gigantic liquor section that’s totally useless to me, and a layout that will take me months to get used to. It’s a grocery store. It’s where you go to buy fud and fud accessories. It’s fine and a little exciting because of the newness of it all.

More booze than you can shake a stick at

As for the much-anticipated clothing, toys, hardware and other previously-alien-to-Kroger sections. They are decidedly meh. That’s also not a surprise.

This store basically exists because Kroger does not want Meijer to gain a foothold in another state. Meijer is a regional chain, with over 500 stores in six (soon to be seven) states, and they pretty much do what Kroger is trying to do with this Markeplace concept. Half of each store is grocery and half is a department store.

Meijer stores are usually the size of Walmart, but the quality of merchandise is a little higher than Target. It’s a nice mix. Mel and I like to shop there when we’re on road trips. They have a great toy department.

Miejer had shown interest in Park Place years ago, but Kroger, knowing that it would devastate their local market share in what is an already economically-challenged region, jumped at the chance to get some nice tax credits, consolidate two of their older stores, and block a competitor from entering another market.

Kroger doesn’t feel threatened by Meijer…if they did, they’d just buy them outright like they’re doing with Giant Eagle, but when you take the tax credits depreciation and write-offs into account, they’ll come out ahead with this move.

The problem with Kroger’s plan is that they do not have an experienced team of retail buyers for the new departments, and they don’t have the supply chains in place for those yet, so for now, the selection is underwhelming and the prices are high, and they have to battle the public perception that Kroger is not the place to go to buy pants, power tools and playthings.

How can you be mad at CAKES?

What I’m finding amusing is the online hostility. People seem to be flocking to the new Kroger just to bitch about it. Folks are calling it the “Swamp Kroger.” Others are saying that the Rich People Kroger at Ashton Place is much better (it isn’t). It’s another example of Charleston’s grand tradition of tearing down something new simply because it’s new.

It’s really not that bad. The upgraded deli alone is way more impressive than anything I’ve seen in a Trader Joe’s. It’s also nice to rediscover all the items that they stopped selling in the Dunbar Kroger over the last five years as they downgraded that store to make sure the regular customers missed it less.

Yes, it’s big and takes longer to get through. That should be expected when you have a bigger store with more stuff in it.

It’s nice to have new carts that have four rolling wheels and don’t go missing as easily. As someone who never drank, stopped eating read meat over a year ago and couldn’t care less about a sushi bar, I really appreciate the fancy-ass cheese department. I do miss the cheese bread that they used to sell in Dunbar. I think there was only one person who knew how to make that the right way, and they don’t seem to have made the move to the new store.

This is just a small part of the fancy-ass cheese department

Dude…Olive Bar, I mean…

In general, I like the selection at the new Kroger, and even though their toy section is anemic at best, I still appreciate that it’s there.

I also like being able to get a dollar a gallon discount on gas, now more than ever.

For me, the new Kroger is just an example of life going on.

Park Place: A Large Open-Air Food Court ?

I do wonder what the hell is going on with Park Place, the shopping center now anchored by this shiny new Kroger behemoth.

We were originally promised an “upscale” mall, which I realize was asking a lot for an area that doesn’t really have a very upscale demographic.

But I was expecting there to at least be a few retail establishments of some sort.

Right now, aside from Kroger, the only retailer announced is Skechers. It’s not a bad addition. I wear Skechers. I also only buy a new pair of shoes once every three or five years. We’re not exactly talking about a high-traffic destination retailer here.

The whole idea of a shopping center is that you have tons of retail establishments to bring in a wide variety of eager shoppers. Once you have that foot traffic, then restaurants will jump into the fray to pluck some of that foot traffic as they go by and plant their butts at the table for a meal.

Right now, and I admit this is very early in the process, the mix of retail to restaurant is way, way unbalanced. It’s like they put the food cart before the horse.  Park Place desperately needs more stores that sell goods, rather than adding restaurant after restaurant.

Word is that the locally-owned Pizzas and Cream, with the curious mix of pizza and ice cream, had its soft opening a couple of days ago, and that’s great. I just worry that cramming a ton of restaurants all together with nothing else to drive traffic will be a commercial disaster.

Menards is supposed to be the other anchor store, but there are rumblings that they’re not happy with the giant Kroger moving right next door, since Menards is basically a big box hardware store that added toys, clothing, groceries and other stuff to their mix. There may be nothing to those rumblings, but Menards is also notoriously unpredictable when it comes around to finally building their stores after they’ve been announced. Their Parkersburg-area store at Emerson Commons was supposed to have been the first in West Viginia when it was announced ten years ago.

They have not yet begun construction. since then we’ve had four Menards stores built and opened in the state.

Meanwhile Park Place has Kroger, a shoe store, a hair salon, a nail salon, and close to a dozen restaurants expected to open by the end of the year.

A year and a half ago I listed a few “dream picks” for retailers who I think would be a good fit for Park Place, and I’m hoping that some of them are still able to elbow their way in between all the restaurants.

These included reasonable choices like Old Navy, Barnes & Noble (or Half-Price Books), Lush, Miniso and Box Lunch. And if they have to add even more restaurants, Potbelly, Panda Express and Denny’s were on my list.

I’d love to see Park Place become a vital, thriving economic engine in our region. I suspect that there are several other retailers on deck who just haven’t been announced yet, but I would hate to see this project flounder due to an over-reliance on food establishments. Aside from hurting all the local restaurants, I just don’t see a giant food court being that much of a draw.

All kidding aside, I see plenty of room for Old Navy, Barnes & Noble, one of those new Toys R Us stores, Miniso, Hot Topic, Torrid, Box Lunch, Lush, a Gashapon place. I could go on…

And that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for fresh content every day, and all our regular features.