Business Journal: Costco Business Center Comes To Country Club, Dimple Folsom's New Future, VSP Acquires Another Company

Costco Eyes Country Club For Business Center Site

Plans submitted to Sacramento County suggest retail giant Costco will be filling a former Sam's Club space in the Country Club Centre shopping mall at Watt and El Camino avenues. The Sacramento Business Journal's Sonya Sorich says this wouldn't be a typical Costco.

"This is essentially a spinoff concept from Costco that appeals to business customers,” says Sorich. “That includes customers in food services, professional offices and the convenience store industry."

This would be the first Costco Business Center in the Sacramento area. The retailer's website lists 18 current stores throughout the country. Most of the products sold there aren't offered in traditional Costco stores and include things like janitorial supplies and 50-pound bags of rice. Last year, Country Club lost 3 anchor stores: Sam's Club, Walmart and Michaels.

The Cave Planned For Dimple’s Folsom Store

Liquidation sales are still underway at Dimple Records stores in the Sacramento area after the chain's owners announced earlier this year they were retiring. Sorich says one of those stores already has a new future.

"Andrew Radakovitz, part of the family that operates Dimple, is teaming up with a longtime Dimple employee to open The Cave in Folsom,” says Sorich. “This is a new buy-sell-trade concept that will fill the spot that Dimple currently occupies in Folsom."

The store will stock some of the same products Dimple does like vinyl records, comic books and movies. But The Cave will also focus on rare, hard-to-find, quirky collectible items. The owners say now that so much of pop culture has been digitized, many people — including millennials — want to touch, hold and hopefully buy items from their childhood like toys, vintage signs and VHS tapes.

VSP Acquires Another Company

Rancho Cordova-based vision insurance and eyewear giant VSP has announced that it's acquired another company — Community Eye Care, a vision management and benefits business out of Charlotte, North Carolina. Sorich says the acquisition was made by VSP Global's not-for-profit vision insurance subsidiary VSP Vision Care.

"It's more evidence of how much VSP is growing,” says Sorich. “Two months ago, VSP announced an agreement to buy San Antonio-based Visionworks, a retailer of glasses, lenses and other optical products."

That deal will be VSP's largest network investment in its history. It's still awaiting regulatory approval. VSP is the Sacramento region's second-largest private company after Sutter Health, with $5.6 billion in gross billings last year.