Another day, another unexpected remodel!

So, I was quite surprised to see today that my new Safeway in Pinehurst has a remodel in progress! Just like with Ballard, I hadn't seen anything that would make me think a remodel was even planned, and with everything that's going on with the economy right now, I certainly wasn't expecting Safeway to start remodels at this point, especially in nicer stores like this one! In fact, King County only moved into "phase 2" (which permits new construction projects) on Friday, so Safeway isn't wasting any time here...

Speaking of not wasting any time, this remodel is proceeding at an incredibly fast pace! I was last at this store on Monday, and there were no signs of an upcoming remodel. In less than 5 days, the contractors managed to strip all of the wall decor, remove most of the fancy perimeter flooring, replace all of the aisle markers and most of the category markers, and start installing the new wall decor. That would have taken months at Fred Meyer's pace!

Somehow, the old Lifestyle v2 decor still looks nice in labelscar form 🙂 As much as I like the new Safeway decor, I'll miss Lifestyle v2, which is quickly being erased from this area.

The dairy section already had a good bit of new decor installed, including the case trim and milk case stripes. I had thought the new light boxes here were just reskinned versions of the Lifestyle v2 ones, but no, those were mounted higher on the wall.

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The produce department also got new case trim, but generally looks like a mess from this picture. Since this store was built with Lifestyle v2.1, it's surprising how bad the labelscars are from the decor removal.

Safeway must really not like renumbering aisles when they remodel stores -- this store kept its arrangement with the same numbers used for the front and back halves of the aisles, while Ballard kept its setup of separate numbers. I suppose the Ballard style would be a little awkward with the large section of "missing" front aisles. Clearly, Safeway isn't into the Kroger practice of aisle number inflation!

On the front end, the checkouts all got new register lights and the customer service counter got new hanging signs -- again, it's amazing how fast they're moving on this remodel!

Wrapping up today's pictures, the old cafe seating area was all under wraps for some reason. It was a really nice space, even though it's been shut down during the COVID scare -- I really hope Safeway isn't giving up on cafe seating altogether just because of current events.

Anyways, this will probably be another weekly-update set, though at this rate it may well be over quite soon!