Albertsons, the operator of thousands of grocery and drug stores across the U.S., has purchased the former Shopko building on Powell’s west side.

The deed transferring the property to Albertsons LLC was officially recorded with the Park County Clerk’s Office on Thursday, Jan. 9.

Messages left on Albertsons’ media hotline seeking more information about the company’s plans for the building were not immediately returned on Wednesday afternoon.

Headquartered in Boise, Idaho, Albertsons says it operates some 2,260 retail food and drug stores, with 1,732 pharmacies, 402 fuel centers, 23 distribution centers and 20 manufacturing facilities. That includes a store in Cody.

The Shopko Hometown building on West Coulter Avenue has been vacant since June, when the store finished a liquidation sale and closed its doors. Outside of some standalone optical centers, the entire chain of Shopko stores met the same fate, as the retailer went bankrupt amid pressure from online retailers and other factors. The chain’s leaders initially had hoped to keep their most profitable locations open — including the store in Powell — but that plan failed.

A private investment firm called Monarch Alternative Capital LP wound up purchasing the roughly 28,500-square-foot building and 3.93 acres of land in Powell last March, along with 78 other former Shopko properties. Raider Hill Advisors, a private real estate investment and advisory firm based in New York, was then put in charge of selling and leasing the stores.

Patrick Brady of Raider Hill, who handled the listing of the Powell Shopko, said Wednesday that his firm “had a couple folks interested in it.”

Raider Hill had said back in July that a sale was pending for the Powell property. There had been widespread speculation about the buyer, with some local residents claiming that Kanye West was interested in the property.

Brady would not comment on the identity of the buyer, but in an apparent reference to Albertsons, said that “we’ve been working with this group for a while.”

Beyond the Albertsons brand, the company also operates as Safeway, Vons, Pavilions, Randalls, Tom Thumb, Carrs, Jewel-Osco, Acme, Shaw’s, Star Market, United Supermarkets, Market Street, Amigos, Haggen and United Express. Albertsons Companies Inc. says it has roughly $60.8 billion worth of annual sales across its stores.

The sale price for the former Shopko building is not public information and has not been disclosed. The Park County Assessor’s Office most recently pegged the market value of the property at $606,615, but that’s only a rough estimate.

The Powell store is among 10 former Shopko properties that Raider Hill says it has sold so far, with another being the former Lander location.