A return to the former East Puyallup Safeway

On the (long) walk back to the bus from the new Southeast Puyallup Safeway, I just had to swing by the location it replaced. Those of you who have been following me for a long time may recognize this as one of my favorite stores from the Flickr era, the very last Pastel Arches store in Washington. As I guessed at the time, the only reason Safeway had let this ancient store stick around for that long was because they were working on a replacement, and this store closed in 2020 around the same time as the new one opened. The store saw some temporary tenants at first before being converted into Catapult Adventure Park sometime in 2021. 

One day around christmas time in 2021, I was sitting on the couch back home in Port Angeles (I wasn't very good about the whole COVID lockdown thing) with the TV on (as it always seems to be back at home), when this ad popped up on whatever local channel was on at the time. (Well, it was probably a shorter version since I can't imagine them airing a full 2-minute spot as a PSA, but I've already digressed enough!) I had known this store had closed, but thanks to COVID, I hadn't gotten around to revisiting it yet. So I was pretty interested in seeing shots inside of the former store, all emptied out and turned into a warehouse for the local food bank... and even more excited to see that some of the neon, which Safeway hadn't turned on in ages and which I had just assumed wasn't working, was turned on! Here are a couple more links showing a bit more of the former store and the neon. The pink and blue stripes are an interesting look, and don't really seem to fit with any Safeway decor package I've ever seen, which really makes me think this store was originally something else; unfortunately, searching through the Seattle Times archive turns up all sorts of interesting stores that used to be at this shopping center, but no grocery stores (and the library doesn't seem to have archives of more local papers from the right time period).

This store was quite cool on the outside in addition to holding onto a cool decor inside. While the interior is all gone at this point, I'm glad to see that the neat 80s glass facade was left pretty much untouched!

As far as I can tell, the only change that was made here was repainting Safeway's green trim black, and maybe painting the rest of the facade a slightly darker beige.

There may no longer be an S on the glass block, but even Catapult's cheap signs don't harm the look of this place too badly! The rest of the shopping center remains the same, including the old Safeway green paint. Somehow, the Rite Aid is even still open as of the time of this post! 

Anyway, that's it for this bonus post. I'll be gone this weekend again for family stuff, but I should be back on Sunday or Monday (at which point I'll have to figure out what I want to do for about a week before I leave again).