COLONIE — Whole Foods, the natural and organic foods grocer, will open its first store in the Capital Region in the spring of 2014, leasing 32,000 square feet of space in the Sears store at Colonie Center.

Whole Foods will be within walking distance of another trendy grocer, Trader Joe's, which plans to open its first Capital Region store on Wolf Road later this spring.

Sears spokesman Chris Brathwaite confirmed the lease agreement, and said Sears would continue to occupy the rest of the first floor as well as the second. The two-story Sears store is just under 300,000 square feet in size, according to Colonie town officials, so Whole Foods would occupy little more than a fifth of Sears' first-floor space.

Joe LaCivita, Colonie's planning director, said the new store will be at the southwest corner of the Sears store, with entrances to the mall as well as to the parking lot.

The project has been in the works for some time. LaCivita said town officials were first approached seven to eight months ago about the plan. Because the project is converting one retail space to another, without any change in square footage, it likely won't need any variances.

Michael Sinatra, a Whole Foods spokesman, said Whole Foods is "very excited to announce an Albany store."

Sears, which owns the building it occupies at Colonie Center, has a similar arrangement with Whole Foods at its store in Greensboro, N.C., Brathwaite said. That Whole Foods opened April 12.

The arrangement likely makes sense for Whole Foods, which by leasing an existing retail building avoids the construction and regulatory costs of a new store. Sears over the years has managed to identify prime retail locations — the corner of Wolf Road and Central Avenue is one of the Capital Region's busiest intersections — so Whole Foods is getting a highly visible site. And Sears will benefit from the traffic that Whole Foods will draw.

Whole Foods first mentioned Albany as one of eight stores it planned to open in fiscal year 2013 during an earnings call Wednesday and in a regulatory filing.

Sears, on the other hand, has been downsizing, closing Sears and Kmart stores nationwide as it struggle to compete with Walmart, Target and other discount department stores.

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Colonie Center spokeswoman Susan Spaccarelli said the shopping mall is "absolutely excited" at the arrangement. Sears has anchored the mall since its opening in 1966.

The entry of Whole Foods means an even more competitive supermarket environment for Price Chopper and Hannaford, with The Fresh Market and ShopRite already here, and Trader Joe's and a Burlington, Vt., grocer, Healthy Living Market and Cafe, on the way. Couple that with the low-cost grocery operators Save-A-Lot and Aldi, the expansion of Super Walmart and new grocery sections in most area Targets, and the competition for Capital Region food dollars is likely to get more intense.

One player still missing is Wegmans, although there's been plenty of speculation that it will anchor the rebuilt Latham Circle Mall. So far, Wegmans has said it has no plans for a store here.

Last week, Price Chopper said it would change the terms of its popular Fuel AdvantEdge program and use the savings to further cut grocery prices.

The surge in new supermarket offerings, a boon for consumers, does not necessarily mean increased competition for long-established businesses, said Duke Bouchard, chief financial officer of Honest Weight Food Co-Op in Albany.

The 36-year-old co-op, which has more than 8,000 share-owning members, is moving ahead with plans to relocate to a multimillion-dollar new building in 2013 that will be five times larger than the 6,000-square-foot Central Avenue location it has long called home.

"Honest Weight has factored an increasingly competitive natural foods landscape into our plans from the very beginning of our expansion project," Bouchard said. "We have thrived since the arrival of Fresh Market, and more recently ShopRite, and we believe that our differentiating factors will continue to set us apart from Trader Joe's and Whole Foods."

Price Chopper spokeswoman Mona Golub did not return a call seeking comment.

A Whole Foods store the size of the one planned for Colonie Center will employ anywhere from 100 to 200 people, Sinatra said, depending on how busy the store is.

Opening the store here means Whole Foods fans will no longer have to drive to central Massachusetts to do their shopping.

"It will lower people's environmental footprint as well," Sinatra observed.

sbarnes@timesunion.com • 518-454-5489; eanderson@timesunion.com • 518-454-5323