The back wall of this store is home to the meat and dairy sections, reversed from the typical Safeway layout (which puts the meat department on the produce side of the store). Even with all the changes that have been made over the years, this store is notably smaller than most Albertsons locations I'm familiar with, having only 13 aisles and a more Safeway-sized back actionway. Notably, it also has Lifestyle beige flooring back here, rather than bare concrete floors like in most Albertsons conversions.
I see a mixture of north-south and east-west fluorescent strip light fixtures at this store, so I suppose Albertsons/Safeway never changed those lights over when Albertsons got rid of the mixture of north-south and east-west aisles at this store! That was certainly one of the stranger aspects to the Blue & Grey Market design. One thing Kroger did at my local Blue & Grey Market Krogertsons was to make all the light strips the same orientation as all the aisles, which obviously all face the same direction now. It makes for a more coherent design.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad this store still has actual floor covering! I'm a bit surprised they didn't go cheap like they did with the Lifestyle v3 remodel of the Portland Culley Neighborhood Albertsons and leave the Tetris floor behind! Beige is a bit of a strange fit with a colorful design like Lifestyle v3, but I suppose it is better than a plain white floor or certainly concrete!
It's possible that that's why the lights are the way they are, but I'm not 100% convinced. For one, if that was the case, all of the light strips would be perpendicular to the aisles, rather than parallel like normal. For two, the "sideways" light strips only extend across a few aisles, meaning that if the aisle switch was where the light strips switch, the majority of the store would have had sideways aisles, which seems weird. This store just doesn't seem wide enough to have a multi-directional aisle layout. I suppose it is possible that the produce section was enlarged significantly at some point, taking away an aisle or two.
DeleteLifestyle v3 has enough Lifestyle heritage for the classic beige flooring to fit in, it's just unusual to see one of these stores without concrete floors! I've also seen a lot of Lifestyle v3/Colorful Lifestyle stores with full woodgrain flooring, so the classic Lifestyle look is a bit of an anomaly.