When I mentioned that multiple buildings were combined to form one store, that didn't seem particularly odd. However, in this case, the four original buildings were combined to form not one new building, but two, with a courtyard in the center. There was a time when it wasn't completely unheard of for stores to occupy multiple buildings in a somewhat haphazard arrangement (Fred Meyer had several stores like that), but I'm not aware of any other multi-building supermarkets these days (meaning ones where you actually have to go outside to go from one building to the other, not the interconnected-building situation you can get in old urban neighborhoods), particularly not ones that were effectively built in the 2000s and are part of a major chain! I remember this store being moderately famous in the retail community for a time (I definitely heard about it somewhere many years ago when I was much less into retail), but it doesn't seem all that well-known these days.
I found out about this store not too long ago skimming through some posts on Retailwatchers, so I'm quite intrigued to see this photoset. The concept of a grocery store split between two buildings with a courtyard in the center is quite odd, and I'm surprised Vons sprung for this setup (especially since this store opened under Safeway's ownership of the chain, I believe).
ReplyDeleteThat's probably where I first heard about it years ago too. Yep, this store opened under Safeway (well into the Lifestyle era of highly-standardized stores, even), so it's quite surprising they were OK with this odd design!
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