Kroger Co.’s $125 million renovation and expansion in Arkansas will include at least four stores in Little Rock, one in Benton, and three to four Marketplace stores across the state, the grocery chain’s Arkansas chief said Tuesday.

“In these tough economic times, the Kroger Co. is prospering,” Mark Prestidge of Memphis, president of Kroger’s Delta Division, told about 100 people gathered for the ceremonial groundbreaking of the state’s first Marketplace store on Chenal Parkway in Little Rock.

Kroger’s Marketplace stores will include a broader range of offerings, such as bistros and jewelry stores inside the grocery stores, as well as gas stations outside. Such stores also sell numerous household items, such as housewares and home decor.

Prestidge acknowledged to reporters that some of the chain’s Arkansas stores have needed updating for several years.

“That’s an understatement,” he said. “We recognize that. When you are in an industry like ours, profits are razor thin. There are many needs. We try to be strategic where we put the capital.”

The Kroger store on Markham Street near the intersection with Rodney Parham Road in Little Rock is undergoing an interior and exterior renovation while the Rodney Parham Road store in the Colony West shopping center is expanding into an adjacent space that once housed a drugstore that has been empty for a few years.

Kroger’s Hillcrest store will be renovated starting the “first of the year,” Prestidge said.

The $125 million will be spent over the next three to five years, but he declined to say where other Marketplace stores will be built.

The Chenal marketplace should be finished in about a year.

As to what will happen with the existing Kroger on Chenal Parkway, Prestidge said the company won’t leave it empty.

“We will attempt first to subdivide it (for) smaller tenants,” he said. “We feel with the investment we’re making (in the new store) that (the old store) will be an attractive center for smaller retailers to come in. But we’ve got time to see what our options are.”

He said Kroger didn’t want to expand the existing Chenal Parkway store because it would have “put stress” on the customers.

Kroger operates 36 stores in Arkansas and employs about 3,800 people.

“Customers tell us they don’t want to make additional trips,” Prestidge said. “Our stores, quite frankly, are not big enough today.”

The company operates 45 marketplace stores in other states.

While the new Marketplace store allows for “one-stop” shopping, he wouldn’t say whether Kroger was going to try to compete with Wal-Mart, which has the largest share of the grocery market in Arkansas. He would say only that Kroger competes with numerous stores.

Wal-Mart has 58 percent of the grocery market in Arkansas with Kroger having 11 percent. In Little Rock, Wal-Mart’s share is 48 percent compared with 31 percent for Kroger.