Like most mixed-use Safeways, this store has a somewhat unusual layout. It's a lot less weird than either of the Queen Anne Safeways, let alone the new U District store, but this store is slightly deeper than it is wide, leading to things like a mid-aisle cut-through that are out of the ordinary for Safeway. (It reminds me a lot of the Roosevelt and Ballard stores, which were built slightly earlier and weren't mixed-use stores).
That cut-through reminds me of the Grocery Palace Randalbertsons I shop at sometimes: https://houstonhistoricretail.com/2023/08/09/randalbertsons-its-your-boomerang-albertsons-store-because-the-locals-rejected-food-lion/
ReplyDeleteOf course, I think the Randalbertsons looks nicer than the rather industrial looking Safeway here, especially with this Safeway having Modern rather than Lifestyle v2 in the Randalbertsons post or Colorful Lifestyle v2 like the Randalbertsons got in the last year or so. I went to the Randalbertsons in December and it was looking sharp! The only bad news is that was, AFAIK, the last regular Lifestyle v2 store in Houston. Oh well, at least I saw my share of regular Lifestyle v2 Safeways, and Proto-Lifestyle, on my vacation last year!
That store just looks weird, but there's no denying that Lifestyle v2 looks better than Modern in most stores (pretty much anything built in the last 30-40 years)! That store would look nicer if they had put the drop ceiling below the ductwork and replaced the Albertsons wall tile, but those details make it look a bit cheap.
DeleteYeah, I don't know why Safeway decided to put the drop ceiling in above the ducts. Kroger installed a drop ceiling at my local Grocery Palace Krogertsons and they did it the normal way and it does look better. That said, just about everything else at the Randalbertsons looks better than at the Krogertsons, but that is a comparison of Lifestyle v2/Colorful Lifestyle v2 vs. Artisan. There is no comparison!
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