Spot the differences

The decor plans for this store are particularly interesting because you can see some of the evolution of Fred Meyer's take on Artisan here. Normally, when these plans are posted, there are two parts -- a smaller-scale details set and a larger-scale set of elevations. And normally, they match... but not here, where the details were clearly an earlier draft than the elevations (and neither completely matches what was actually installed, but that's about normal for Fred Meyer). 

Normally, I don't bother showing the details sheets, just because there's a lot of them, and they tend to be in a very weird order. But here, there are some interesting things to note. For one, toys and the indoor garden section are flipped in these plans compared to reality. (The garden center signage is on a later sheet.) Also, the flower cutouts look much nicer in the plans than they actually turned out -- I'm not sure if there was an issue with installation or if the concept just doesn't translate well to real life. Oh, and there's an exclamation mark in the "thanks for shopping" sign, oddly enough.

Moving along the front wall, this sheet shows the front end. Chase is still shown in these pictures, while the electronics decor was still shown as TBD, and the Brands/Quality sign was still Kroger blue.

Interestingly, this plan sheet seems to indicate that new decor was planned for the Fred Meyer Jewelers department at some point -- who knows how far along that design went, but I doubt we'll ever see Artisan's Fred Meyer Jewelers decor since Kroger is giving up on that line of business.

The only big change I can see on the grand aisle is flipping the Artisan Breads and Bakery signs. This arrangement probably makes more sense, with the bread sign blending in to the word collage.

Again on the back wall, not much changed, except that the dairy sign was originally intended to be a lot taller than it actually is.

And then here's the garden center signage, showing that it was intended to be adjacent to the outdoor garden department at some point. I'm curious why they changed it -- this seems to make more sense in some ways, being right next to the hardware section.

Fred Meyer clearly hadn't decided just how little decor they wanted for electronics at this point, though the blank wall placeholders aren't too far off from what we got in the end!

Perhaps the most interesting change is in the clothing department. Rather than the Artisan chevrons, this department was originally intended to get "Dip decor by Dfab", which presumably would have looked more like what we saw in Greenwood, and which I haven't seen elsewhere. I'm beginning to think that Fred Meyer has at least two stores where they experiment with decor ideas that often don't come to fruition -- one of which is Greenwood, and the other of which is one in Portland that I'll hopefully be posting about sooner rather than later.

 Nothing much to report in the vestibules, so on to the (presumably newer) decor elevations! 

Starting again in the front left corner, the garden and toy departments are still backwards, and there's still an exclamation point in the thanks sign, but everything else I noted was updated -- the electronics decor, Brands/Quality sign, and bakery and bread signs.

Around the rest of the main salesfloor, the dairy sign is still oversized, and now there's a picture next to the garden shop sign, which doesn't appear in the final build. I'm pretty sure the electronics department walls are a bit more bland in reality than shown here, too.

The clothing decor looks about right for what was built in the end, though.

And another small interesting note -- apparently, Fred Meyer was considering whether or not to remove the big box above the produce prep area. I feel like it would have looked better if they had left it in place... 

Anyway, that's it for this store! I'm not sure if anyone else finds this type of post as interesting as I do, but it's quite interesting to me, so I'm glad I was able to find these documents.