UPDATE - Former Albertsons #4466 - Port St. Lucie, FL

Albertsons #4466/Future Walmart Neighborhood Market #7299

900 SW St. Lucie West Boulevard, Port St. Lucie, FL

Cashmere Corners

     For this post we return to the mighty (torn apart) St. Lucie West Albertsons. As you can probably guess from the above photo, things have changed quite a bit here since this store's original feature on AFB back in June 2014 (to read the original St. Lucie West Albertsons post, click here). Back in June 2014, this store was still sitting empty for two years at that point, amid the announcement of a new Aldi and new Walmart Neighborhood Market to be built on opposite corners at this same intersection. The construction of the Aldi on an outparcel of the Home Depot on the other side of Cashmere Boulevard went as planned, and Aldi opened their first Treasure Coast store in that spot in February 2015. However, Walmart and their plans to build the Treasure Coast's first Neighborhood Market on the other side of St. Lucie West Boulevard on an empty 16 acre lot, along with an adjoining shopping center, didn't fare as well with the city of Port St. Lucie as Aldi's plans did. The city rejected Walmart's original plans after numerous complaints from nearby residents about traffic and quality of life issues that would have been created by building the new shopping center, and the city zoning board wasn't too thrilled with Walmart's plans for handling the increased traffic on St. Lucie West and Cashmere Boulevards. After factoring all of that in, Walmart had to go back to the drawing board. As Walmart tried to fix their plans, the owner of the land the new store was to be built on, Martin Health Systems, who owns a medical facility next to the planned Walmart site, began to have second thoughts about the new Walmart shopping center after the original plans were rejected. Late last year, Martin Health Systems announced that the 16 acre undeveloped lot the new Walmart Neighborhood Market was to be built on would instead become greenspace, meaning Walmart's plans for the new shopping center were officially canceled.  

     However, even after residents kept complaining about how this new Walmart Neighborhood Market was only a little over a mile from an existing Supercenter to the west, Walmart still wanted to put a Neighborhood Market in St. Lucie West even after their original plans were foiled. That's when Walmart began to gravitate toward the former Albertsons across the street from their original site. Walmart presented their plans for opening a new Neighborhood Market in the former Albertsons space to the city council, and the plan was approved in April 2015. Construction on the new store began in July 2015, with an expected completion and Grand Opening sometime in early 2016. I happened to stop by here in mid-August to see how the transition was coming along, and I was surprised by the amount of work Walmart was putting into the place. They were ripping the entire building apart! Walmart has opened two Neighborhood Markets in early 2000's Albertsons stores similar to this one (#4463 in Orlando and #4482 in Brandon), and it didn't look like they did anything to the exteriors on either of those stores (I can't speak for the interiors of those two stores yet, although I'm sure Walmart probably put some work into those).  

     If you look closely behind the fence, you can see where Walmart began ripping apart the right portion of the facade. Thankfully, this construction fence had an opening to allow for cars to pass by the front of the store, so I wasn't stuck all the way back here trying to get pictures of this place. We'll have some closeup photos of the construction coming up in a moment. 

     Looking over the construction fence that runs through the center part of the parking lot. In here is where the construction office is and where the construction workers park, along with material storage. 

     Heading around toward the front of the store...

     The left portion of the canopy still hasn't been touched, and if you look closely, you can see the faded circle from where the old Starbucks sign was. This store's Starbucks closed around 2009, before the rest of the store closed. 

     Now we can have a better view of the construction (or more so destruction) that's going on.

     According to the drawings of the new Walmart that I found on the city of Port St. Lucie's website, Walmart is going to be moving their main entrance closer to where Albertsons exit doors were located (under that chunk of exposed wood). Interestingly, Walmart's new exterior is supposed to look exactly like Albertsons' - including an almost exact replica of this archway they're tearing apart in these photos to be built over their new entrance, even to the extent of matching the original detailing and the little blue diamonds from Albertsons! It'll be an exact copy of an early 2000's Albertsons facade, but constructed by Walmart. You can see the drawing of the new exterior here by scrolling all the way down to the last page. I'll also be explaining the other changes you might see in those plans as we go along in this post. 

     If you ever wanted to know what the inside of an Albertsons canopy looked like, here's your answer. 

     Looking out into Albertsons parking lot from the front of the store, which is now the construction staging area. 

     Even with all this fencing blocking the front of the store, I was still able to get a few glimpses at what they're doing inside. Let's take a peek...

     The original main entrance into the former Albertsons, which looked like this before all the construction started. As you can see here and in the coming photos, the interior has been completely gutted to the shell and trusses. All the walls, flooring, lighting and even the HVAC system from Albertsons is gone. For fun, this is what the view through the front door looked like last year when the store was still sitting empty. 

     That small hole of sunlight flowing into the interior of the store is coming in through the emergency exit door that was located in the back of Albertsons' Frozen Foods department, near the dairy cases. 

     Looking to the left as one would have originally entered Albertsons. As you can kind of see in the darkness, there is a row of steel beams running from floor to ceiling from the front to the back of the store from just left of Albertsons' main entrance. According to the plans for the new Walmart, the new store is only going to occupy 43,880 sqft. of the former 55,922 sqft. Albertsons space. Those beams are the framework for a new wall that chop off the left side of the former Albertsons, where the prepared foods, deli, and produce sections were located, to be leased by someone else, while Walmart takes over the rest of the store.  

     Zooming in through the giant hole that's now in the front of the store to see the remains of the interior, and by that I mean there remains nothing of Albertsons' interior. If you look closely in the background though, there's a backhoe in here. It was running during the entire time of my visit. I could hear it backing up and making loud crashing sounds the entire time.

     See here for a similar view back when everything was still intact. This is looking down the front walkway toward the right side of the store.

     The exit door was on the right side of this picture, and a row of windows was on the left where all the drink bottles are.

     That little bit of light trickling in from the former Frozen Foods/Dairy emergency exit door gives us a another decent view of the current status of the interior. 

      This will be the approximate location of Walmart's new main entrance. 

     Looking back toward the left side of the store. Here's another similar comparison from a little over a year ago. 

     The cherry picker wasn't being used while I was here, but I assume earlier in the day there was someone up there ripping apart the facade. Most of the work being done while I was here seemed to be taking place in the far back interior of the building. 

     And here's another comparison photo from last year similar to the view in the above picture. 

    Walking down the front of the store from the construction fencing toward the former liquor store. Nothing has changed over this way...yet.

     The former Albertsons Liquor store, still sitting empty. You would think since this space is already approved to sell liquor, and since it would be attached to the new Walmart Neighborhood Market, that it would make perfect sense for Walmart to use this space as an attached liquor store, like many of their Neighborhood Markets have to begin with, right? Wrong. According to Walmart's plans, the former Albertsons liquor store here will be torn down in order for Walmart in install a drive thru pharmacy window on this side of the building, and a U-shaped access road to get to it. Only the liquor store space will be torn down for the drive thru. The main Albertsons building and the rest of the plaza to the right of here will remain intact. 

     While the liquor store hasn't changed since our last visit here, I figured a few more photos of it wouldn't hurt, especially since it's going to be town down soon, if not already by the time this post goes live.

     The last remnants of the Theme Park/Grocery Palace interior to be seen here. However, even though the Albertsons liquor store is going to be torn down for the pharmacy drive thru, Walmart still wants to have a liquor store at this location...

     And the Walmart liquor store will be located in the Food Mart of the former Albertsons Express gas station. It's a bit of a walk to get down here from the main store if you want your booze, but I guess Walmart really wanted that pharmacy drive thru. The gas pumps will remain and will be converted into a Walmart brand gas station according to the plans, and not MurphyUSA like Walmart usually uses for their gas stations around here. The new liquor store will act as a 'food mart' of sorts for the gas station, although in order for them to be able to sell the hard liquor, they can't offer much more than a rack of chips and a small soda cooler or so inside, not that Walmart gas stations really offer much of a food mart to begin with. Florida has some of the loosest laws regarding alcohol sales when compared to most states, but the one thing the state is very picky about how and where hard alcohol can be sold. The photo of the gas station above is the one from the original post. I didn't get a new picture of it during my return visit since there were two cops sitting in their cars between two of the pumps talking (I didn't want to draw attention to myself and have them start asking me questions), but nothing changed yet while I was there. 

     The road sign still features Albertsons' painted over logo.

     Back over to the main building, if you look really close, you can still make out the Albertsons labelscar. 

     While the construction crew works hard on stripping this building of everything Albertsons, the mighty St. Lucie West Albertsons will continue to live on here on AFB, well, at least in abandoned form in the original post. I'll finish off this post with a final, and probably the most striking comparison of this entire photo set. Compare the above photo to the one below: 

      At least I was able to get some pictures of this place before Walmart stripped it of everything from its previous life. But no matter what they do to you ol' 4466, I'll never be able to think of this place as anything else but Albertsons.  

Until the next time,

The Albertsons Florida Blogger

The Largo Albertsons Makes the News

Photo Courtesy of Adam R.

     Thanks to Pseudo3D for sending in the link to this article. The Tampa Bay Times published an article yesterday about the Largo Albertsons. The article, which you can read here, talks about the economic mystery of why Albertsons has chosen to keep the three Florida stores, and remodel them even though they are not a major player in Florida's supermarket industry anymore. While that is mentioned, the main focus of the article is on the loyal shoppers who continue to patronize the last Albertsons in Tampa Bay, even after the majority of Albertsons' stores in Florida closed over the last decade. From the article, it seems as if there are still plenty of Albertsons fans out there. I like this one shopper's reasoning for why he prefers to shop at Albertsons over the other grocery stores in the area: "I come here because I don't like Publix taking over everything. And I love their cookies." (Those Albertsons chocolate chip cookies he was referring to from the bakery are pretty good). Even if the remaining Albertsons stores only do half the sales that a typical Publix would, those sales are enough to keep Albertsons alive in Florida, for the time being anyway. It's a pretty interesting article, and I recommend reading it if you have a chance. Also, one last thing to mention is the last line in the article: "Neither Proffitt [Albertsons's Houston Division spokeswoman] nor the company president would elaborate on why they are retaining the Florida stores." Hmmm...I don't know if it's just the way that's phrased, but it makes it seem like Albertsons does have some kind of secret motive for keeping the three Florida stores alive. I just wish I knew what it was.

     And before finishing this off, just another reminder there will be a new store post on the 20th.

So Until Next Time,

The Albertsons Florida Blogger

It's Been Their Pleasure for 85 Years - Happy 85th Publix!

     On this day 85 years ago, George Jenkins opened the first Publix store opened at 58 4th St. SW in downtown Winter Haven, FL. George Jenkins was a man who held various odd jobs in his younger days before finding his place in the supermarket world. Before Publix, George Jenkins found himself working at various Piggly Wiggly stores in West and Central Florida as a manager in the late 20's. After many of the unfortunate events in Florida and the US in the late 20's (the Florida Real estate bubble of 1925, direct hits by two hurricanes, and the stock market crash of 1929), the owner of the Piggly Wiggly stores in Florida was forced to sell his stores to a new owner. After the new owner purchased the Florida stores, he decided he didn't want to make the trip to Florida to visit his new acquisitions. When George Jenkins heard this, he decided he should make a trip to the new owner's office in Atlanta to introduce himself and discuss what the future would hold for the Piggly Wiggly stores in Florida. When George Jenkins arrived in Atlanta, he arrived at the new owner's office and asked his secretary if he could speak with him. His secretary replied that the new owner was in an important business meeting at the moment. However, George Jenkins could overhear in the other room that the new owner was on the phone with someone, discussing his recent golf game. This absolutely enraged George Jenkins. He returned to Florida and decided to quit his job as manager of the Piggly Wiggly after the incident in Atlanta, and decided he would open his own grocery store right next door to the Winter Haven Piggly Wiggly he formerly worked at. Jenkin's new store, named Publix after an old movie theater chain on the brink of failure named Paramount-Publix (Jenkins once said he chose that name because he liked the sound of it), opened on September 6, 1930. Jenkins declared war on the neighboring Piggly Wiggly with various rival sales and one-upsmanships. After a year or so of battling, the Piggly Wiggly conceded and closed up shop, while Publix continued to prosper, relocating to a new state-of-the-art store in 1940, dubbed a "food palace" by George Jenkins. That new store would have looked just like the drawing on the bag in the photo above, called the "Art Deco" style Publix. Publix continued to open stores of this style into the 1950's all across Florida, until their famous wing stores made their debut later that decade. And Publix is still growing today. Publix currently has 1,103 stores in 6 states (Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, and North Carolina), and supposedly Mississippi is somewhere on the horizon, although nothing official has been announced yet. Of Publix's 1,103 stores, 760 of them are located in Florida alone, where Publix enjoy's a nearly 50% market share and title of #1 supermarket chain, that is, after chasing off or nearly killing practically every other mid-range supermarket competitor in the state over the last two decades. Who would have thought that a supermarket founded out of spite and named after a dying movie theater could have turned into such a success? Publix has become a Florida icon, and they'll probably be around for another 85 years since they have yet to find rival who could really challenge them in their home state. 

Signs like this just appeared within the last week at Publix's stores. This is one of three different sayings featured on these signs. 

Anyway, more Albertsons coming on the 20th...

Until then,

The Albertsons Florida Blogger

Former Albertsons #4331 - Melbourne, FL

Albertsons #4331

900 S. Babcock St., Melbourne, FL

     For today's former Albertsons store tour, we're going back to school. Today we feature the former Downtown Melbourne Albertsons, which has since become one of the 15 locations of Fort Lauderdale based Keiser University throughout the state of Florida. As for Albertsons, they first opened here in 1979, in an area that was once the main commercial hub for the city of Melbourne. This stretch of Babcock St. from Hibiscus Boulevard to the north once featured stores such as Sears, Belk, Publix, Woolworth, Zayre, Walgreens, Scotty's Hardware, J.M. Fields, and the Brevard Mall, with JCPenney, Montgomery Ward, Winn-Dixie, McCrory's, and Eckerd as anchors, plus locations for numerous restaurant chains, along with the Albertsons featured here today. As time went on, many of those retailers fell on hard times and closed, and with the opening of Melbourne Square Mall a few miles west on US 192 in 1982, Melbourne's retail hub began to move west, with many of the stores still open in this area relocating to the area surrounding the new mall. As of today, the only ones of those original stores still located on this stretch of Babcock St. are Sears, Publix, and Walgreens (with the latter two relocating to newer buildings nearby in the late 90's). With this stretch of stores located so close to Melbourne International Airport and the many technological companies located around it, as the retail vacated, offices began to repurpose many of these buildings (including the entire Brevard Mall). That was also the case here with the Albertsons. This Albertsons was an early casualty, closing sometime around 1993 or 1994, although I've never been able to pinpoint an exact date. Florida Lottery records show this store sold some winning tickets in 1993, however that's the last record I have of this store in operation. As you'll see below, the 1994 satellite images show some cars in the parking lot, but I'm not sure if that's for Albertsons. I do know Albertsons left before the end of the 90's, because there are signs of a renovation happening here by the 1999 satellite image, but more on that later.   

     Although this building has been extensively renovated since its Albertsons days, it still retains the general look of a Skaggs Model Albertsons store on the exterior. Keiser added in more windows and covered over the original stone paneling with stucco, however, it's still pretty obvious that Albertsons once resided here. The entrance into Keiser is even in the same spot where Albertsons' entrance would have been.   

    Here the Albertsons detailing becomes even clearer. This store would have been an exact copy of the Lake Worth Albertsons (#4328) back in the day.

     Left side detailing.

     Right side detailing. 

     One more look across the front before beginning our look around the side...

     This photo was taken from the parking lot of the abandoned restaurant next door, which had some interesting architecture we'll take a quick look at in a moment. The photos that you're about to see in this post were taken on two different occasions, some from April 2014 and some from April 2015. Some changes happened in that time frame, especially over on this side of the building. The pictures you see now are from April 2014.

     That texturing down the side of the building is 100% original to Albertsons. 

     In the photos from April 2015, this area where I'm standing is going to look completely different. Now around to the left side of the building...

      The former liquor store and side entrance to the main store are located off the to right in this photo, under the long blue awning.

     More original detailing on this side of the building left over from Albertsons.

     That door under the blue semicircle awning, which is an entrance into Keiser's Culinary Arts division, would have originally been an emergency exit back in this building's Albertsons days.

     Now for a closer look at at the liquor store/former side entrance.

     The old liquor store entrance on the left (where that bench is now) in the above photo has since been converted into windows, however the old side entrance into the main store is still pretty much in tact...

     Even the two doors are in the exact spots where Albertsons' doors were, except switched out for manual ones.

     Heading around back, it still looks pretty original here.

      The former receiving area has since been converted into an area for covered outdoor seating.

     We'll come back for one last look at the Albertsons building in a moment, but just a quick look at the neighbors:

      First off is that interesting looking restaurant I mentioned earlier. What first drew my attention to this building as I was photographing the former Albertsons back in April 2014 was the strange barn theme the building seemed to be designed with. Then when I saw it was abandoned, it became even more interesting. This turned out to be a former location of Barnhill's Buffet (which explained the whole barn thing). Barnhill's Buffet was a restaurant chain that once had locations throughout the Southeast, featuring Southern style specialties. However around 2006, Barnhill's began to fall on hard financial times and they were sold to a new operator after their founder sold off the chain, just for the company to fall into bankruptcy about a year later. This location was one of the bankruptcy casualties, closing around 2007. The 16 remaining Barnhill's locations that survived the bankruptcy have slowly closed over the last few years, to the point where I'm not sure if there are any Barnhill's locations remaining. (UPDATE 8/9/15: There's actually only one Barnhill's remaining, located in Jonesboro, AR - Thanks Retail Retell for finding that!). Since the closing of the restaurant, it was primarily used as overflow parking for Keiser until March 2015, when Keiser took over this property and tore down the Barnhill's building in order to expand their Melbourne campus, which I have some photos of below, and explains why I returned for a few more photos in April 2015.    

      Barnhill's logo still remaining on the door. 

     Back of the Barnhill's building. 

      Close-up of some of the barn door detailing.

     Now for a quick look at the other former neighbor of this Albertsons, on the other side of the building. 

      This patch of grass you see above was the site of a former Scotty's Hardware store which closed a long time ago. Scotty's was a chain of hardware stores that had locations all over Florida until they went out of business in 2005 due to increased competition from Home Depot and Lowe's. All I know about this particular site was this sat abandoned for a while, and was later used for storage before being torn down in 2006.  

      There's that Sears I mentioned earlier in the background of the former Scotty's site. 

       One last view of the Scotty's site and the back of the Albertsons building, along with a preview of some of that new 2015 construction I mentioned.

       Site layout for reference. The former Scotty's was made out of two buildings that sat in those two grass patches above and to the right of the words 'Scotty's site'. 

      And a quick jump a year into the future to April 2015 for a quick look at some of the construction going on at this former Albertsons, along with a few extra exterior views.

      The new building being constructed on the former Barnhill's site. While this building won't be connected to the former Albertsons building, I read in an article about the groundbreaking of this building that the exterior of the former Albertsons was going to be altered and updated as a part of the construction and expansion, prompting me to make a quick return trip before any Albertsons traces are wiped away forever.

     This is where the former Barnhill's building would have stood. This area is going to be the parking lot for the new building.

     Keiser's road sign, which I don't believe is original to Albertsons.

     Aerial Time:

     First, Historic Aerials courtesy of Google Earth:

Former Albertsons #4331 - 2014

Former Albertsons #4331 - 2005 - The Scotty's building is still standing here.

Former Albertsons #4331 - 1999 - Keiser may have just moved in here at this time. The parking lot is full and it looks like new blacktop was recently put on it.

Albertsons #4331? - 1994 - While Scotty's looks to be gone, I'm not entirely sure if Albertsons is yet. It looks like there's a bit of a crowd in front of the store.

     Now for Bird's Eye Aerial Imagery courtesy of Bing Maps:

Front

Right Side

Back

Left Side

     While I'm sure there are absolutely no traces left of Albertsons on the inside of this place, the exterior still has some pretty obvious clues remaining. So everyone, that wraps up this post.

Until next time,

The Albertsons Florida Blogger

A&P Forever

   

A former A&P Centennial store located at 1515 Sarno Road in Melbourne, FL, re-purposed as offices for Brevard County. After all these years, the building still retains its distinctive cupola on the roof.

The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (A&P)

1859-2015

     

     While A&P hasn't operated in Florida since 1987, I feel the need to write this post as the 156 year old chain, the first true supermarket chain in the nation founded in 1859, meets its end as they declare their second bankruptcy and announce the sale of their assets. While A&P has been having problems due to overexpansion for many years now and shrinking their footprint, the last decade has been especially hard on them after many attempts at refreshing their image, modernization, and some botched acquisitions. A&P had over 15,000 stores across the country at one point, the title of the #1 chain store in the nation, and an empire from coast to coast that would slowly crumble as time went on. A&P has touched many people across the country, not just in their current territory in Greater NYC and Philadelphia. They created many famous brands such as Ann Page and Jane Parker, and even spun off some brands that are now household staples, such as Eight O'Clock Coffee and Woman's Day magazine. They even had what could be considered the most famous supermarket design ever, the Centennial store, introduced as their prototype in 1959 to celebrate their first 100 years of existence, dotting landscapes and shopping centers across the country. Many of these Centennial stores still exist in various forms of modification today, like the one pictured above, as A&P built new stores and left certain markets. A&P was an American icon, and a model for many supermarket chains. 

     A&P stores existed in Florida since the early part of the 20th Century, primarily locating in storefronts in downtown areas. They then joined suit like the other chain stores and began relocating to modern, standalone buildings and shopping centers by the 1950's, only to pull out of Florida by the 1970's. In the early 80's, A&P decided to come back to Florida, but this time under the Family Mart name. These new A&P Family Mart stores were nothing like the small stores A&P left behind in Florida. The Family Mart stores were close to 55,000 square feet in size, and were similar to the Albertsons stores being built in Florida at the time, featuring a wide selection of general merchandise products as well as groceries and full service departments. However, the reborn Florida A&P division was a short lived venture. A&P closed all of their Florida Family Mart stores in 1987, selling most of the locations off to Kash n' Karry and Kroger's Florida Choice division, ending A&P's presence in Florida. 

     While I've never been to an A&P personally, it's really sad to see an iconic brand fade away, especially since A&P was the company that originated the modern supermarket chain. However, out of all of this, Albertsons' Acme division will gain 76 stores from A&P, which you can read more about here on the Acme Style blog.

Anyway, more Albertsons coming to the blog on August 8th. 

Until then,

The Albertsons Florida Blogger