Trader Joe's is again pursuing a location in Venice, filing a new application with the city tied to the long-discussed former Fox Venice theater property on Lincoln Boulevard.
A Los Angeles City Planning application for 620 S. Lincoln Blvd. lists Trader Joe's as seeking permission to sell a full line of alcohol for off-site consumption in connection with a proposed 12,585-square-foot grocery store. The application lists proposed operating hours of 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.
The filing does not mean the store has been approved to open, but it formally places the Monrovia-based grocer back on the record at the site after years of competing visions and unresolved plans for the property.
This is not the company's first attempt to put a store in Venice. In 2019, Trader Joe's filed plans for a larger, 15,000-square-foot store also on Lincoln Boulevard and sought a beer and wine license for that location. Those plans never resulted in an open store.
The 620 Lincoln property carries a long and layered history. The former Fox Venice theater opened in 1951 and later operated as a revival house before declining. It was eventually repurposed as the Fox Discount Store indoor swap meet but the location has been vacant for at least the past few years.
The Venice application comes as Trader Joe's is also advancing plans for a new Santa Monica location. The company purchased a former Rite Aid drugstore at 1331 Wilshire Blvd. for $22 million in late 2025.
The acquisition fits a broader Trader Joe's strategy of purchasing vacant drugstore properties across Southern California. The chain surpassed 600 U.S. stores in late 2025 and has actively pursued former Rite Aid sites following that company's second Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in May 2023.
The Wilshire property had sat largely idle since closing as a Rite Aid on June 10, 2025, part of the chain's nationwide restructuring. But prospective tenants faced a complicating factor: the site carried split zoning, with the front portion along Wilshire designated Commercial Mixed-Use Boulevard and the rear parking lot carrying a residential R2 designation. City planning staff identified the split as a mapping error from earlier zoning updates.
The Santa Monica City Council addressed the issue at its Sept. 30 meeting, approving a correction that extended the commercial mixed-use designation to cover the entire store structure while keeping the parking lot in the residential zone.
The Wilshire Boulevard site sits near 14th Street on a major east-west commercial corridor, adjacent to an existing Vons supermarket. Trader Joe's already operates three stores in Santa Monica, on Pico Boulevard, further east on Wilshire, and on 5th Street.