Winn-Dixie and Jacksonville grew together but sale could end headquarters era

Three weeks after the blockbuster announcement that Aldi will buy the Winn-Dixie supermarket chain, a big trailer with "Winn-Dixie New Look Coming Soon" splashed across its side still stands off University Boulevard near the Arlington Expressway.

The message in bold red colors is a sign that notwithstanding the pending purchase of Jacksonville-based Winn-Dixie by Illinios-based Aldi, the work continues on bringing a new Winn-Dixie into the College Park shopping center, formerly known as Town & County before it fell on hard times.

Across the river in Northwest Jacksonville where grocery stores are few and far between, shoppers roll carts out of the Winn-Dixie in the Gateway Town Center. Winn-Dixie stepped up in 2020 after Publix announced it was leaving Gateway, ensuring the surrounding area wouldn't become another food desert lacking access to fresh produce and meats.

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The willingness of Southeastern Grocers, the parent company of Winn-Dixie, to invest in the redevelopment of Arlington and the stabilization of Northwest Jacksonville might have happened even if the chain's corporate headquarters had not been based in Jacksonville since 1944.

Still, having corporate decision-makers in Jacksonville helped local leaders make the case to Winn-Dixie executives who have called Jacksonville "our home."

The announcement that Aldi has a definitive agreement to purchase hundreds of Winn-Dixie and Harveys Supermarket stores across the Southeast could end that headquarters era, unless city officials can convince Aldi to relocate its headquarters from Batavia, Illinois, a town in the Chicago metropolitan area.

Beyond losing the high-paying executive jobs and bragging rights that come with a headquarters office, the pending sale also has caused apprehension about how it might affect the city's attempts to expand the presence of grocery stores in neighborhoods that lack them.

"I'm nervous about this whole situation — this whole sale — because my gut tells me they're going to make businesses decisions from far away, not caring about our community," said Reggie Gaffney, who helped convince Winn-Dixie to locate in Gateway Town Center when he was a City Council member.

The sale, which could close in the first half of 2024 after going through regulatory approvals, would make Winn-Dixie part of one of the fastest-growing chains in the county. Aldi, a global company founded in Germany, is in the midst of what it calls "coast to coast" expansion aimed at having 2,400 stores nationwide by the end of 2024, which would be double the number of stores Winn-Dixie had at its peak.

Mayor Donna Deegan and JAX Chamber CEO Daniel Davis both said Aug. 16 after the announcement of Aldi's acquisition the city would like to meet with Aldi executives about relocating its headquarters.

"Recently, we’ve seen more than our share of companies relocating headquarters to Jacksonville," said Davis, who is not related to the Davis family that used to own Winn-Dixie. "We’ve got a great story to tell and we can’t wait to talk to Aldi about coming here."

Winn-Dixie's headquarters and the Davis family's impact

The connection to Winn-Dixie's headquarters has paid dividends for Jacksonville, particularly when the Davis family had a controlling ownership stake in the company. The family played a leading role in such civic activities as bringing a Mayo Clinic campus to Jacksonville and supporting Jacksonville University.

"The zenith of the relationship between Winn-Dixie and Jacksonville has been the Davis family," said Jacksonville Historical Society CEO Alan Bliss. "It had this really strong, robust family connection. The principals of the corporation were related to each other and sank their family's roots in Jacksonville."

He said the recognizable brand of Winn-Dixie added to the cache of Jacksonville being its headquarters.

"It was ubiquitous all through the states of the American South and Southeast," Bliss said. "You couldn't live in a town anywhere without being aware of Winn-Dixie. When you could say that the place where you shop two or three times a week — wherever you live in the Southeast — has their headquarters here, that meant something."

The hyper-competitive supermarket industry caught up with Winn-Dixie in the 2000s. In 2005, Winn-Dixie filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The reorganization wiped out the value of the company's stock, effectively ending the Davis family's ownership stake.

But the family's impact continues in Jacksonville. The Davis College of Business at Jacksonville University bears the family's name in recognition of a $20 million gift in 1998. Florence "Flo" Davis, whose husband was Winn-Dixie co-founder J.E. Davis, was a member of the JU board, as was her son A. Dano Davis.

Mayo Clinic in Florida was built on 440 acres of land donated by the Davis family after J.E. Davis spearheaded a fundraising campus in 1984 to bring the campus to Jacksonville.

The Davis family also made philanthropic gifts to the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens, Edward Waters University, the Boy Scouts, and the Jacksonville Symphony and Orchestra. The Jacksonville Symphony's service award is named after Isabelle Davis and the gallery next to the symphony's Jacoby Hall is named after Florence N. Davis.

At the state level, J.E. Davis and his brother A.D. Davis were among the co-founders of Florida TaxWatch, the influential Tallahassee nonprofit that bills itself as government watchdog and taxpayer research institute.

The Davis family still remains active in Jacksonville with mega-developments being built on its massive land holdings. The family partnered with the The PARC Group on eTown in southeast Jacksonville and on Nocatee that is mainly in northern St. Johns County. In March, City Council approved a 6,100 acre development that will be built east of eTown on Davis-owned land.

Southeastern Grocers joins battle against food deserts

While the Davis family turned to developing its land holdings, Winn-Dixie battled to survive after emerging from bankruptcy protection in 2006. As the supermarket industry went through mergers and acquisitions, the BI-LO supermarket chain bought Winn-Dixie in 2012, consolidating two of the largest store networks in the Southeast.

BI-LO was based in Greenville, S.C. but Jacksonville officials convinced the company to put the headquarters of the expanded company in Jacksonville, a feat city leaders would like to repeat with Aldi. In 2015, the ownership of the company changed its name to Southeastern Grocers and has operated Winn-Dixie as one of its subsidiaries.

Southeastern Grocers hasn't had the same high profile as the Davis family in Jacksonville's civic affairs, but it has awarded grants for education and diversity programs across its market territory. The Winn-Dixie Gives and Harveys Supermarket Gives Foundations gave $50,000 this week for the Library Foundation of Jacksonville's JaxKids Book Club, and Winn-Dixie donated $25,000 to Ribault Middle School for physical education and after-school athletic programs.

The Jacksonville headquarters location also has carried over in some of its business decisions

In March 2022, Southeastern Grocers announced it would open a new Winn-Dixie in the College Park shopping center. The city's Renew Arlington initiative pegged that 70-year-old shopping center as a linchpin in revitalizing the University Boulevard corridor.

"We are always looking to better serve our customers, and the new College Park Winn-Dixie presents an exciting opportunity for us to expand in our hometown," Southeastern Grocers CEO Anthony Hucker said in 2022.

The pending sale to Aldi has not affected Southeastern Grocers opening the College Park store later this month.

"We couldn't be more eager to introduce our store to the Arlington neighborhood," said Meredith Hurley, senior director of communications and community for Southeastern Grocers.

Southeastern's support for Arlington's redevelopment came two years after it opened a new Winn-Dixie in the Gateway Town Center, filling a void after Publix announced it was leaving the mall in the Brentwood neighborhood. The departure of Publix stoked fears that losing a grocery store at Gateway would worsen the problem of food deserts in northwest Jacksonville.

Gaffney, who was representing a City Council district that contained Gateway, said that as someone who was a life-long Winn-Dixie shopper, it "was a no-brainer" to reach out to Southeastern Grocers about putting a Winn-Dixie store into the space being vacated by Publix.

The city, which was working to reduce food deserts, provided an $850,000 incentive package for renovation of the site for the Winn-Dixie store. The agreement requires Southeastern Grocers to repay a portion of the incentive if the grocery store, which had its grand opening in February 2020, does not operate there for at least five years.

In January 2020, Hucker thanked city officials "for their support of our continued investment in our hometown" in a news release that said the new store would save Brentwood from becoming a food desert.

"We are committed to being a store our customers can always count on, and we want the communities we serve to know we are always there for them in their time of need," he said.

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Aldi will make decisions on Winn-Dixie stores after closing deal

The future of the Winn-Dixie store at Gateway Town Center will ultimately be up to Aldi when it decides what to do with nearly 400 Winn-Dixie and Harveys Supermarket stores in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. The acquisition still must go through regulatory approvals with closing of the deal projected for the first half of 2024.

Harveys Supermarket is not as well-known as the Winn-Dixie brand, but Southeastern Grocers has three Harveys in Northwest Jacksonville, which is more than any other brand in that part of town.

Aldi CEO Jason Hart has said that after it completes the acquisition, it will operate the Winn-Dixie and Harveys stores while evaluating which ones will "convert to the Aldi format to better support the neighborhoods we'll now have the privilege of serving. For those stores we do not convert, our intention is that these continue to operate as Winn-Dixie and Harveys Supermarket stores."

Besides the Winn-Dixie and Harveys stores, Jacksonville also is home to what Southeastern Grocers calls its "store support center" comprising its headquarters in an office building on Prominence Parkway on the Southside, its distribution center on the Westside and facilities on Edgewood Avenue.

"While we cannot comment or speculate on any forward-looking strategies or another company's plans, we can confirm that nothing changes today," Hurley said. "Aldi has shared that they respect the accomplishments of SEG and its leadership team, and that they anticipate very few changes at the store support center in Jacksonville following the completion of the transaction."

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Homegrown Winn-Dixie gave Jacksonville an edge that sale might change