The excavators did their job Tuesday, smashing through windows, roof and walls of the old Radio Shack building on the east side of the old Kmart plaza in Fort Collins.

The demolition at 2505 S. College Ave. is the first tangible step toward redeveloping the site into a 123,000-square-foot King Soopers and fuel station.

The new King Soopers will be on roughly the same footprint as the Kmart building. The fuel center will be located on the eastern edge of the property, about where the Radio Shack building was located.

Construction fencing around the perimeter of 2535 S. College Ave., went up 10 months ago, but it's taken awhile for demo to actually begin on site. The store, owned by Kroger, pulled demolition permits for the old Radio Shack and the Loaf N' Jug at 150 W. Drake Road in January, but as of Tuesday, no such permit has been issued for the main Kmart building.

Still, demolition of the two buildings on the periphery are a hopeful sign of what's to come.

King Soopers has been working on plans for the site since 2016 — when Kmart closed — and won city approval for a new store and seven-pump fuel center in January 2021. But first, it needs to clear the property of its existing structures.

The shops that included the former Larkburger will remain, as will the Jiffy Lube at the corner of Drake Road and College Avenue.

Plans for the grocery store include a drive-thru pharmacy, parking spots for its grocery pickup program, a promenade on the west side of the building, pedestrian corridors through the site and a garden-themed outdoor plaza on the south side.

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The redeveloped 11.5-acre site would have 416 parking spaces, including about 120 shared spaces for the city’s MAX bus rapid-transit line. A bus pullout lane is expected to be added to Drake Road near the MAX station.

The new store will replace the 56-year-old King Soopers at 2211 S. College Ave., the smallest and oldest Kroger store in Fort Collins. That store opened in 1964 and is about half the size of its planned replacement.

The old Kmart site has been on the decline since it closed in 2016. It is currently used as parking for MAX and had been used as a seasonal marketplace for pumpkins and Christmas trees. It also served as a cut-through to avoid Drake and College, one of the busiest intersections in the city.

King Soopers has four stores in Fort Collins in addition to the one at South College: Taft Hill Road, Harmony Road (John F. Kennedy Parkway), Timberline and Drake roads, and North College Avenue.

Pat Ferrier is a senior reporter covering business, health care and growth issues in Northern Colorado. Contact her at patferrier@coloradoan.com. Please support her work and that of other Coloradoan journalists by purchasing a subscription today.

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: New Fort Collins King Soopers progress begins with demo of Radio Shack