Former Albertsons #4415 - Ocoee, FL

Albertsons #4415/Super Saver #1532

1560 East Silver Star Road, Ocoee, FL - Albertsons Plaza

     Over the last few years, LA Fitness has been expanding throughout Florida by taking over former grocery stores and other empty retail spaces (in addition to building some locations from the ground up). Recently, every former retail building LA Fitness has taken over for a new gym becomes unrecognizable from the exterior as their remodels have become more thorough (for example, like what happened to former Albertsons #4429 in Melbourne). When LA Fitness takes over a former retail building now, it usually has its original exterior torn off for the standard modern LA Fitness exterior you can see in that link. However, that wasn't always the case. Up until the late 2000's or so, LA Fitness would leave the exteriors of the buildings they took over completely intact, which thankfully was the case for this former Albertsons. As you can see, this place still looks a lot like a former Albertsons store. Albertsons opened at this location in 1993 as the first grocery store at the corner of Silver Star and Clarke Roads in Ocoee, a western suburb of Orlando. With a 1993 opening date, this would be considered one of the very first Albertsons stores to get the arch front design, the design typically associated more with the late 90's and early 2000's built stores. Typically, these early 90's stores had blockier exteriors, more along the lines of this style. While the exterior of this store was ahead of its time, the interior wasn't. This store opened with the usual early 90's Blue and Gray Market interior and store layout, probably looking much like this inside for its entire run as Albertsons. This store lasted as an Albertsons from 1993 until 2005, when it was selected as one of the 11 "underperforming" Albertsons Florida stores to be converted to the new Super Saver format. As you may know, Super Saver was hardly given a chance to prove itself when Cerberus all but killed off the new discount supermarket concept in 2006 when they took over control of their portion of Albertsons (which included all of the Super Saver stores at the time). In 2006, the Super Saver located here closed, ending this building's life as a grocery store. In 2008, LA Fitness took over this building for a new gym. While LA Fitness stripped out all of the original interior from the main store, they at least spared the exterior of this building. Had LA Fitness come along two or three years after that instead, the entire exterior would have been wiped away as a part of their conversion. With the exterior in-tact, it also makes this post much more interesting that we at least have something left over from Albertsons to look at!

     After this store opened in 1993, no other stores in Florida used the arched exterior design again until 1997, when it became the standard design for new stores throughout the company. After the Superstore era ended around the time this store was built, Albertsons must have begun experimenting with exterior designs to find one they liked. 1993 also brought us the one and only Circle Model store, which looks like no other store Albertsons ever built in Florida. Even though this wasn't the design ultimately chosen for the early 90's stores, someone must have liked this look enough to come back to it a few years later.

     The right side of the Albertsons building. Those windows were added by LA Fitness.

     On the left side of the building we find the former liquor store.

     As usual, the liquor store at this former Albertsons is still sitting abandoned, and has been ever since Super Saver closed in 2006. I don't understand why these former Albertsons liquor stores are so difficult to re-tenant, but I'm not going to complain. These former liquor stores are usually the only glimpse we have to see what these former Albertsons stores looked like when they were open.

     Ready for a peek inside the old liquor store?

     Blue and Gray Market floor tiles! In addition to the flooring, the ceiling and lights are also original to Albertsons. Unfortunately, all of the traces of Blue and Gray Market decor on the walls were removed at some point in order to install new drywall in this space. 

     Here's an overview of the former Albertsons building, as seen from the small strip plaza that juts off to the right of the building.

     Looking toward the entrance of the former Albertsons from the front walkway.

     This is a look down the walkway that contains the small strip of stores. I believe there were 6 or so small storefronts in this little strip, which connects the former Albertsons space to a CVS Pharmacy. Speaking of that CVS...

Eckerd #3087/CVS #4238

1612 E. Silver Star Road, Ocoee, FL - Albertsons Plaza

     This pharmacy originally opened as an Eckerd in 1993 with the rest of the plaza. Eckerd was Florida's longtime drugstore chain. Although founded in Erie, Pennsylvania in 1898, Eckerd moved their headquarters to Clearwater, FL in the 1930's (I believe), and gradually became the largest drugstore chain in Florida for a while (and 4th largest in the US at their peak). In 2004, all of Eckerd's Florida locations were all sold to CVS. There really isn't anything special about this Eckerd/CVS - I just had a few extra minutes after I finished photographing the former Albertsons and decided to pop over here. Strip mall pharmacies are becoming increasingly rare in suburban Florida, although there are still a few of these strip mall Eckerd/CVS stores still out there, especially in the Orlando area (as well as in other parts of the state). Finding a still operating strip mall Walgreens, however, is a much more difficult challenge these days than finding an operating strip mall Eckerd/CVS! I'm not sure if the Albertsons had a pharmacy or not due to the presence of the Eckerd in the same strip. It was pretty rare to have an Albertsons in the same strip as another drugstore in Florida, although it would also be rare for an Albertsons to not have an in-store pharmacy in Florida, so I don't know exactly how that situation was worked out here.

     A look down the front of the CVS, showing the line of windows that lets quite a bit of sunlight into the store.

     Why not pop inside for a quick look around since we're down this way anyway?

     I guess you can say one of the slightly unique traits of this CVS is its orientation. Unlike most drugstores (whether in a strip plaza or freestanding), this store is wider than it is deep. Due to that, the aisles are oriented parallel to the front wall rather than perpendicular to it. The main entrance is directly in front of me, with the registers to my right and the aisles to my left.

     In total, this store is 8 aisles deep. This photo is looking from the left side of the building toward the right side due to the unusual orientation of the store. The lighting in here is original to Eckerd, and based on how rough the carpeting looks, I'd say it's a safe guess to say that was left over from Eckerd too. CVS didn't do a lot to the Eckerd stores they took over, as the conversions happened rather fast. The main thing CVS did during the conversions was switch out Eckerd's decor for theirs.

     The pharmacy counter takes up the entire right side wall of the store. Since this store is at the edge of the plaza, it is possible to install a pharmacy drive-thru here (and there is room too). However, one was never installed here.

     One last interior photo from the CVS before heading back outside...

     And here's an overview of the entire plaza. There were few enough cars in the lot this particular morning and the plaza was small enough for this photo to turn out rather well.

     Now time for some satellite images, starting with some Bird's Eye images courtesy of Bing Maps:

Front

Right Side

Back

Left Side

     Before moving on to historic aerials, I wanted to talk briefly about the other grocery competitors that joined Albertsons at the corner of Silver Star and Clarke over the years. As I mentioned earlier, Albertsons was the first to build on this corner in 1993. Two years later in 1995, Winn-Dixie built a store across the street as the anchor to the Lake Olympia Shopping Center. Last to join the party was Publix, who opened their store on this corner in 2001. For 4 years, all three of Florida's big 3 supermarkets competed against each other on the same corner, one of the only examples of this I can think of (at least where all three stores actually co-existed with each other for a while). If only Kash n' Karry put a store on the empty lot at the southeastern corner of this intersection, that really would have been something! Out of these three stores, guess who's the only one left open...

     ...and of course, the answer is Publix! (I wish I could have shocked everyone and said it was the Winn-Dixie). This is Publix #761, a rather large looking Publix that opened in 2001. I believe this store was a replacement for Publix #318 a little further east of here at Silver Star and Hiawassee, a building which is now home to a Roses store.

     Lastly, we have the Winn-Dixie. This was Winn-Dixie #2250, which opened in 1995. I believe this store replaced Winn-Dixie #2292, which was located just east of here at Hiawassee and Silver Star, the same corner Publix would later move from. While this store looks similar in design to the early 2000's built Winn-Dixies, it was a typical 90's Marketplace store inside for its entire 20 years in business. Winn-Dixie silently closed this store in Summer 2015, and the building is still vacant. My trip out this way was a bit unplanned, so I didn't realize this Winn-Dixie had closed at the time, otherwise I would have got a few pictures of my own of the place.

    Interestingly enough, Google Street View captured imagery of this plaza while Winn-Dixie was in the middle of their store closing sale. I thought it was interesting enough to include a screenshot of it with this post.

     So with that little bonus out of the way, let's push ahead with some historic satellite imagery of the former Ocoee Albertsons courtesy of Google Earth:

Former Albertsons #4415 - 2016

Former Albertsons #4415 - 2006 - Looks like Super Save had just closed when this image was taken.

Albertsons #4415 - 2002 - Albertsons was going head to head with Publix and Winn-Dixie when this image was taken.

Albertsons #4415 - 1995 - The crowds look a bit better back when Albertsons was still the only one on this corner!

Future Albertsons #4415 - 1990 - Nothing but an orange grove here.

     Once again, thanks to Orange County's lack of updating photos on their property records, we find a interesting treat here - a photo if an operational Albertsons Super Saver! I'm pretty sure this is a first time a photo of an operational Super Saver has found its way to the blog. This photo was taken May 1, 2006, just a few months before the plug was pulled on Super Saver in August 2006. In case you ever wanted to know what one looked like, here you go. Some stores did get the Super Saver shopping cart logo on the front though, which this one didn't.

     And finally, a photo of the Super Saver liquor store. I'm surprised Albertsons continued to operate these liquor stores after the Super Saver conversion, but they did.

     So that's it for former Albertsons #4415. Not really a whole lot to see here from Albertsons anymore, but at least this time, LA Fitness left us some kind of glimpse into the past.

Until the next post,

The Albertsons Florida Blogger