Winn-Dixie #285
5850 SW 73rd Street, South Miami, FL
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| Today's post is a presentation of Miami-Dade County retail |
We received some sad news not too long ago that Winn-Dixie #333 in Palm Beach Gardens, FL would be closing on April 19, 2026, the same day this post goes live, due to the landlord increasing that store's rent by an exuberant amount. What's notable about that closure is that it marks the end of another one of Winn-Dixie's interior decor packages - The Green Interior. Amazingly, even with the bloodbath from Aldi and the pullout from Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, Winn-Dixie still had at least one store left featuring every one of the chain's decor packages dating all the way back to the mid-1990's Marketplace interior in the go-forward batch. While the rest of those older decor packages are probably living on borrowed time as the chain prepares for a big remodel wave, losing The Green Interior is still a pivotal moment in the chain's post-Aldi transformation, especially having only been used from 2014-2015. While I've been to the Palm Beach Gardens Winn-Dixie a few times and will eventually have a post to share about it, I thought we'd use today to look back on a different side of The Green Interior, a side that rarely ever gets mentioned amidst the 50 shades of green we've become so accustomed to seeing tied to this décor...
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| And you even had a chance to win a free giant salami too! That's a lot of salami! |
Our story today begins in South Miami, a small but somewhat affluent suburb of Miami sandwiched between the University of Miami campus and Dadeland Mall on the US 1 corridor. Building in the heart of South Miami's downtown, Winn-Dixie arrived in the area in 1962, when the store we'll be touring today first opened under the Kwik Chek name.
By the 1970's, the Kwik Chek name was mostly phased out in favor of the unified "Winn-Dixie" brand, with Winn-Dixie's current checkmark logo actually serving as a nod to Kwik Chek (and where that logo originally came from). The South Miami Kwik Chek was expanded from its original size with an expansion out the front in the 1970's, probably around the time this store rebranded to the Winn-Dixie name. Looking through historic aerial imagery, that 1970's expansion was the only major expansion this store ever saw, which makes sense being this was a tiny Winn-Dixie for modern standards (only 20,000 square feet, although there really wasn't much space to expand any more without sacrificing additional parking).
While it may have not gotten any bigger since the 1970's, this store did receive cosmetic upgrades through the years. I believe this store received a remodel to the Purple/Maroon decor in the early 2000's (if anyone can confirm/deny that, let me know - this photo and a remodel permit from 2002 were all I had to go off of), and then received one final interior remodel in late 2014. While this would have been an interesting Winn-Dixie to visit just for being a funky expanded 1960's store, the 2014 remodel actually added an additional layer of interest to this store for me. While the facade was dressed up a bit in the remodel (a nice plus), the interior received a twist to the standard Green Interior of the time - a grayscale version of it. While Winn-Dixie has been known to do a one-off variant of a new decor in the past (see The White Interior, for example - an odd prototype of Down Down), this was not even the first Green Interior remodel done - The Green Interior debuted in March 2014 in a new store in Miramar Beach, FL, while this store didn't receive its remodel permit until October 2014 (after a few other Green Interior remodels had been completed too). I guess Winn-Dixie wanted to see how the grayscale trend would work in one of their own stores, opting in the end to keep everything green after this lone test remodel.
I was actually tipped off to this store in a blog comment a number of years ago, and with its one-off remodel, it went high on my priority list if I ever made it to Miami. However, it was later revealed this store had a clock ticking over it, as the property the Winn-Dixie stood on was sold to a high-rise developer in 2020 for $18.95 million, so you can probably tell where this is going...
Unfortunately, land in busy urbanized parts of Miami and its suburbs is extremely valuable, and developers drool over these South Florida retail and shopping center sites in order to convert them into much more lucrative mixed-use and residential uses when the opportunity strikes. Following some delays due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the plans for the new mixed-use project stalled for a bit before finally moving forward come 2023, with the Winn-Dixie closing that July. Thankfully the developers of the new mixed-use building opted to include a new supermarket to replace the one being demolished, however, instead of a nice modern Winn-Dixie returning to the site, in the end The Fresh Market signed on to be the grocer to anchor the new project. Considering when all this was happening, it was probably a long shot to have Winn-Dixie anchor the new mixed-use project, as the news of the chain's sale to Aldi broke only a month after this store closed for good. Seeing how upscale South Miami, especially its downtown area, has become (Whole Foods has a store just around the corner from here), I'm not surprised The Fresh Market was brought in as a replacement grocer. They're probably a better fit for the area these days, honestly, although it would have been nice to see Winn-Dixie get a new store instead - a modern urban mixed-use Winn-Dixie would have been quite the sight!
Considering Winn-Dixie put a lot of work into this building in 2014, I doubt they were expecting this store to be redeveloped so soon after. The refreshed facade from the 2014 remodel was quite nice, with the stone arch accent over the entrance giving the building additional visual appeal. Following the 2014 remodel, this store actually looked and felt quite modern both inside and out, something I was impressed to say visiting a 1960's-era Winn-Dixie at the time!
Stepping inside, let's get to the fun part of this post - here's The Green Gray Interior! While it will become more apparent once we see the walls, pretty much everything that would be green in the traditional version of this interior was painted gray instead, but everything else was pretty much the same, including the signage and fonts. Floral occupied an island just inside the main entrance, with produce branching off into the front right corner of this rather small building.
The wood-style floor tiles were installed as part of the 2014 remodel, and cover the produce department as well as the entire right side of the building.
While the gray wall decor is an unusual sight as it is, adding to the strangeness of this store is the meat and seafood service counter located on the right side wall just after produce - you never see that department on the side wall in a Winn-Dixie!
Compared to the more common green variant, we see the department lettering was changed from a black color to silver, the same holding true for the trim underneath. Also note in this store that the department names are mounted directly to the wall rather than on a white plastic piece.
Turning around, here we can see the dividing line between the original supermarket and the 1970's expansion space. This store's expansion is pretty easy to see, as the original space has an open ceiling while the expansion still has a drop ceiling, the columns demarking the line even more so. When the store was expanded, most of the service departments were moved into the new area, done in a way to mimic Winn-Dixie's layout of the time with deli/bakery in the front left and produce in the front right. The meat and seafood service counter we just saw is located in the original portion of the building, and I don't know if its placement is a holdover from the original Kwik Chek layout (I have no idea what that would even be) or just a quirk because there was no place to build out the counter along the back wall.
Following meat and seafood along the right side wall were the beer coolers, with a small natural foods department located across from that in this extra-wide aisle.
In order to make sure everything matched, this store even received specially made category markers too - the original Green Interior category markers were black to match the rest of the trim in that version of the decor.
More original category markers are visible here along the back wall, where we transition into the pre-packaged meats. It's actually quite strange to see the meat coolers isolated from the meat and seafood service counter like this. In most supermarkets, regardless of which brand, the service case and the pre-packaged meats are almost always adjoining!
Interior photos of this store from before the 2014 remodel are practically non-existent, at least any that show the interior of the building in any decent way. Still, my guess is the open ceiling in the original 1960's part of the building were added in the 2014 remodel, as some of the early, more elaborate Green Interior remodels did add opening ceilings in part of or throughout some stores (and I don't think Winn-Dixie was that ahead of the times building stores with a warehouse ceiling in the 1960's either!).
Outside of the produce department, which got woodgrain-style tiles during the 2014 remodel, the remainder of the store had these beige tiles installed. These tiles almost mimic a concrete floor (which Winn-Dixie may have been going for), but look much nicer (and much less scarred - can you only imagine what exposed concrete would look like in a store this old?).
Moving along the front end, here's a look toward the deli and bakery space, which we'll be seeing in more detail shortly.
With this store pretty small as it was, Winn-Dixie putting all those promo displays in the grocery aisles wasn't helping much, making the salesfloor feel more cramped and cluttered.
Returning to the back wall, you may have noticed another quirk to this already quite quirky decor. Looking at the walls, you'll notice this store lacks any of the Green Interior's distinctive wall adornments, such as the farm graphic panels, wall icons, and the wheat stencils. Where all of those items should go, the walls in here are just blank. However, I think the reason Winn-Dixie skipped making custom gray versions of all those items is because this store just doesn't have the vertical wall space for all that. Even with an open ceiling, the ceiling in this store is still pretty low, and they probably wouldn't fit.
The Green Interior was know for its excessive use of category markers, something I don't remember Winn-Dixie doing with any of the other modern decor packages (where category markers are primarily reserved for the frozen foods department and some cooler space). Aisle 6 had plenty of category markers to see on both sides of the aisle, giving us plenty of examples of their unique design.
Without the wheat and the other icons filling up the blank wall space, the Green Gray Interior is actually pretty boring. It's just gray signs mounted to a gray wall, but with all that gray going on, I guess being boring was just inherent!
As simplistic as this remodel ended up being, I wouldn't call it bad though. For being nearly 60 years old when I visited, the store actually came across as clean and modern, something many Winn-Dixie stores built in the 1990's couldn't even say until recently. I also believe the Green Interior was one of Winn-Dixie's nicest (and classiest) interior decor packages from the post-Marketplace era too, so I suppose it's just disappointing to see this decor dumbed-down a bit compared to what it could have been.
Anyway, that last aisle we were in was home to Winn-Dixie's health and beauty department. With this store being so small, it never had a pharmacy, a department Winn-Dixie was pretty big on adding to most stores in the chain from the 1980's until the 2005 bankruptcy. Since there was never a pharmacy, the deli counter was designed to bump right up to the check lanes, another unusual sight for a Winn-Dixie. While it's been rebuilt and reconfigured (especially in the 2014 remodel), the combined deli/bakery would have been here in the front left corner ever since the store was expanded in the 1970's, just in a smaller form back then.
The "Freshly Prepared" icon on the corner of the deli was the only non-department signage embellishment this store received, with another matching sign on the opposite angled cut-out facing the main deli counter. The "Freshly Prepared" name the Green Interior used for its hot-foods counter was a carryover from is predecessor, the Transformational decor.
Prepared foods had a prominent placement on the corner facing the check lanes and the front entrance, with the deli counter just beyond that, followed by the bakery in the corner.
While it looks fancy and modern, what we see here is just a dressed-up version of Winn-Dixie's 1970's deli setup. With Winn-Dixie not really getting into bakery departments until the 1980's, many bakery departments in these really old Winn-Dixie stores just ended up being small additions to the side of the deli like this. However, with all the modernizations this store received, even though it was still small, this store was still able to offer a rather large selection of baked goods.
In addition to the space it shared with the deli, the bakery had additional prep space on the left wall, as well as a secondary department sign matching the one we see above.
Turning back to the grocery aisles, aisle 9 was home to cleaning supplies, and the last aisle before frozen foods.
Leaving aisle 9, here's a look across the store's back wall again. This store was wider than it was deep, but still small. To my left you can see the beginning of the dairy department, the remainder of which wraps onto the left wall into the last grocery aisle.
In old-school Winn-Dixie form, the frozen foods aisles were left unnumbered here, with those two aisles, the last two in the store, comprising aisles 10 and 11. The aisle we see above would have been aisle 10, home to the first row of freezers and some more columns, another remnant from the various reconfigurations this store received through the years.
Over in frozen foods, the original category markers were all replaced with the modern black rectangles that have been used in every decor since Down Down. Winn-Dixie went through and installed these in every store in the early 2020's regardless of what decor a store had at the time, acting as a refresh to the lone department Winn-Dixie still uses category markers in. While the category marker refresh was a later addition, we see the freezers along the wall appear to have been installed new in the 2014 remodel, with the ones in the middle of the aisle hailing from a much older remodel.
Heading back to the front end, here's one final look at the deli department. As part of the 2014 remodel, a full-service custom sub counter was installed here, which appeared to still be in use in 2021 too. While many Winn-Dixie stores gave up on custom subs in favor of the pre-made ones every store offers, there are still a handful of custom sub counters still operational out there throughout the chain.
One direct carryover between the green and gray versions of this decor were the check lane lights, which uses the original decor's black trim and wheat pattern. What is different here is that the check lane closest to where I was standing was only called "Checkout", followed by lanes 1-4 beyond that for a total of 5 staffed lanes.
Thank you for shopping your South Miami Winn-Dixie, a longstanding supermarket ousted by inflated property values...
While Winn-Dixie ended up getting booted from the site entirely following the redevelopment, at least the new apartment complex did include a grocery store of some kind in the final plan, as many of these redevelopment project of retail and supermarket boxes do not include much (or any) commercial space in the end. Sadly Winn-Dixie is still facing this same problem elsewhere around Florida today, as one of the chain's go-forward stores in Seminole just closed due to the landlord wanting to redevelop the site into apartments too, and that site will not be getting a replacement supermarket of any kind either. It's just saddening to see Winn-Dixie targeted at all angles by greed, whether it be from Aldi's antics or landlords wanting to squeeze every dollar than can out of a property!
Anyway, to finish out this post on a slightly less depressing note, I hope everyone enjoyed seeing this alternate take on the Green Interior, another strange one-off from the folks at Winn-Dixie. While a more basic take on that decor, the store was still nice, and must have done well enough to get a remodel of that extent in 2014, which makes it an even bigger shame that Winn-Dixie had to get pushed out of this site too!
While that's it for Winn-Dixie this month, AFB is back next week for one final post in April, where I'll share one final Albertsons update with everyone before moving onto something new for May. Be sure to come back next week for more!
So until the next post,
The Albertsons Florida Blogger
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