I hope...

they change the Wild Oats on Cap Hill over to a Whole Foods. It would definitely give Queen Soopers a run for the money.

Wild Oats stores to face scrutiny

'Older, smaller Wild Oats stores could be closed as the chain is acquired by Whole Foods, industry watchers said.

A cluster of stores in Boulder and another concentration in Denver are likely to get a hard look by Whole Foods as it considers which stores to close, they said.

"They're going to look at an overall map of these two chains and if they have stores that they think are competing in the same marketplace, they're going to close one," said Jon Schallert, a retail consultant in Longmont.

Wild Oats has smaller stores in general, "so unless those stores can be reformatted or expanded, they may be on the chopping block," said Mary Beth Jenkins, president of the Laramie Co., a commercial real-estate brokerage firm.

Some older, smaller Wild Oats stores, such as at 1111 S. Washington St. near I-25, and at 900 E. 11th Ave near Cheesman Park, may not fit into the Whole Foods prototype.

In Boulder, aside from the new Twenty Ninth Street Wild Oats prototype store being built, other Wild Oats stores are smaller.

"I suspect that those Wild Oats stores are the ones they'll be looking at" as they determine how to consolidate, said Susan Graf, president of the Boulder Chamber of Commerce. '