Several Turlock Town Center businesses are on the move as the location prepares to welcome its first grocery store since Albertson’s left over 10 years ago.

The current Rite Aid location in the Turlock Town Center, located on Golden State Boulevard at its intersections with Geer Road and Canal Drive, is looking to downsize according to real estate agent Tim Moody of Meridian Pacific, Ltd., and will be moving into the spaces currently occupied by Rainbow Fabrics, Klassy Kuts and Goodwill.

The three businesses will move to the north end of the shopping center, and in Rite Aid’s place will be the newest addition to the center — a Smart & Final Extra!, described by the company as an upscale version of the Smart & Final warehouse stores. According Smart & Final, the Extra! Store combines the high-quality, fresh produce of a farmer’s market, the low prices of a discount grocer and the large club size products of the company’s traditional stores.

“Smart & Final really likes the site because of all the residential areas around it, and the fact that there’s no grocery stores in the immediate area,” Moody said, whose real estate agency purchased the Turlock Town Center in October of this year. “They consider themselves a miniature Costco.”

The changes to the center will include a complete rebuild of the new Rite Aid location, Moody said, which is expected to be completed in early 2019. New paint throughout the center will accompany the newly-constructed portion of retail space, he added, in order to make the space appealing to potential tenants.

The occupancy rate of the Turlock Town Center will be 95 percent once the current changes are complete, Moody said — only three small spaces and a commercial pad will be available come 2019. Meridian Pacific is no stranger to revitalizing shopping centers, taking a shopping center in Modesto from 25 percent occupancy to 95 percent. The group brought a Smart & Final Extra! to that space as well.

Turlock’s Smart & Final Extra! will be completed in about a year, he added.

“The price points are slightly above Costco, but they have a lot of the neighborhood grocery items as well,” Moody said. “It will probably be a year before they move in, because our first move is to move tenants out of the way of the new Rite Aid, build the Rite Aid space, move them over and then do the inside work for Smart & Final.”

Turlockers can expect to see the Turlock Town Center continue to fill with new businesses.

“We’ll continue to upgrade the tenant mix and make property investments to make the center more attractive to the community,” Moody said.