I think the new tile (and the metal strips above, concealing the covered-up windows behind the produce cases) look quite nice with this store's 60s design -- definitely better than the Lifestyle-era slate tile, which was intended to fit in with the craftsman/mission design style Safeway liked to use on Lifestyle-built stores. The bench under the canopy is a nice touch on this suburbia-trying-to-be-pedestrian-friendly street (it looks nice from this picture, but behind me is four lanes of traffic plus parking), but I'm not sure why they decided to plant shrubs under the canopy where they'll never get rain. Or maybe that's not as much of an issue here, since it doesn't rain nearly as much as I think it should!
This store certainly looks like it is in good shape on the outside. Compare that to even a 30 year old Kroger, much less one from the 1960s, on the outside and this is miles ahead of that. Then again, the Kroger standard isn't much of a standard!
ReplyDeleteSafeway has been doing a decent job of fixing up the exterior of their stores recently, at least when they do remodels. They have plenty of rather rough looking stores, though! We've seen several of those (mostly on the Albertsons side) on here recently.
Delete