Albertsons #4437 / Sedano's #32
14655 SW 56th Street, Miami, FL - Bird Lakes Plaza
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| Today's post is a presentation of Miami-Dade County retail |
The Kendale Lakes neighborhood of Miami is quite famous in the world of retail nerds for being home to the last Kmart store on the North American mainland, a much sadder experience these days compared to when we toured that store at the first link in 2021. While seeing what Kmart is like in 2026 does pique my curiosity, I almost don't want to see that Dollar General-sized Kmart either, as I feel it would taint all the good memories I have of what Kmart was like when they were still passible as a legitimate retail operation. However, today's post isn't about Kmart - we'll have plenty more chances in the future to discuss that chain - today we'll focus on a more obscure piece of Kendale Lakes retail history. While the retail tourists are all down at Kmart taking selfies to prove to their Instagram followers that the chain still shockingly exists (honestly, about 95% of the business that store still gets is probably from that!), we'll head about 3 miles north of there to the site of the former Kendale Lakes Albertsons, another installment in the saga of Albertsons' disastrous expansion into Miami-Dade County:
Albertsons entered the Miami market in 1996 after many years of hesitation about entering the area. Seeing opportunity as other local chains imploded, Albertsons decided to give Miami a try with the announcement of two new stores - one off Bird Road at the Palmetto Expressway, and one in Kendale Lakes. The Bird Road store (#4435) was the first of the pair to open in January 1996, with the Kendale Lakes store opening a few months later. The Bird Road and Kendale Lakes stores were identical on the interior, although Kendale Lakes received a more Spanish-architecture inspired facade compared to the more average design Bird Road received.
After only 5 years in business, Albertsons was bleeding money in Miami. It was announced in November 2001 that the chain would be closing 3 of its 4 stores in the county (the sole survivor being right over the line from Broward County), and selling 4 additional undeveloped/unopened sites to other grocers as well. I went over the details of Albertsons' woes in Miami in my post on the Bird Road store, so be sure to give that post a quick read if you haven't to learn more about why Albertsons did so poorly in the area.
When Albertsons pulled out of Miami in late 2001, 3 of their locations in the area were acquired by Sedano's - Kendale Lakes, Homestead, and an undeveloped site near Miami Lakes. The acquisition of this building in Kendale Lakes would serve to replace an older Sedano's across the street with a newer, larger, more modern location, with the new store opening not long after it was acquired.
Sedano's didn't do much to this building following its acquisition from Albertsons. The interior was given a light remodel to Sedano's decor (although not quite as light as what happened in Homestead), but otherwise the shelves were restocked and a new sign was put on the exterior. The building remained that way until sometime in the late 2010's, when Sedano's did a little more work to the building (which I'll explain later).
Like most mid-1990's Albertsons stores, the building has an exterior cartwell walled-in with a half-height wall, the one here to the right of the main entrance.
The front walkway is still very much unaltered from Albertsons, with the original can lights still exposed. As you probably saw in the exterior photos so far, when I arrived at this store, there was a line of people waiting to get in. The store had already opened for the day, so when I visited here in mid-2021, I thought this line was part of Sedano's enforcement of some lingering COVID-era crowd management rule. I stood here waiting for a few minutes, but as I waited, I noticed people freely walking in and out of the building. Seeing that and noticing the line still not moving, I just left the line and walked in. No one said anything to me, so I don't know what the line was all about. When I left the store about a half hour later, these people were still standing out here, so hopefully whatever they were lined up for was worth the wait!
With that line outside, you'd get the impression this store would be pretty busy inside, but it wasn't. It was a slow weekday morning here, my first stop on what ended up being a very long day of driving around Miami visiting a bunch of supermarkets. I think that was one of my infamous 10+ store visit days, but when I was driving nearly 4 hours to a destination, I tried to make the most of it!
Back on topic, here we're looking toward the store's front entrance and its café, nestled into a little nook between the front doors and the bakery. Sedano's did replace the building's original swinging doors with those sliding ones at some point, although I'm not sure if that happened from the start or during one of this store's later refreshes. The café nook was carved out of an old office Albertsons would have had up here, with the walls knocked out in order to install the new counter.
The café serves as an extension to the store's bakery, with the two counters sharing these pastry displays.
The pastry counters we just saw were situated where Albertsons once had its floral department, with Albertsons' bakery located under the lower ceiling we see here in the front left corner.
While Sedano's bakery is still located in the front left corner, a little rearranging was done by shifting the bakery service counter to the front wall and pulling the displays forward, allowing Albertsons' original service bakery space under the lower ceiling to be converted into the café's seating area. Sedano's also replaced all the flooring in the café area, removing Albertsons' original tile in favor of the woodgrain pattern we see here.
Turning around, we find the produce department occupying the vast majority of the left side of the building.
While the floor tiles throughout the remainder of the store are original (except for that random green tile in the foreground - that very much is not!), I also think the produce display tables were left behind by Albertsons too - I remember Albertsons used to like those long, diagonally-oriented produce tables like we see here. Sedano's also tends to reuse whatever they inherit from other grocers in their stores, so that would add a little bit to that theory too.
Produce continues into the back left corner of the building, where Albertsons' deli used to be located. Surprisingly for Sedano's, the actually wiped away most traces of the old deli space, which used to have a lower ceiling that stuck out from the wall like this. Sedano's completely rebuilt this corner of the store for a new stockroom entrance and some meat coolers, which is interesting, as the other Albertsons building of this vintage Sedano's operates out of (in Pembroke Pines - #4439) still has the obvious deli ceiling back here. However, that Pembroke Pines store still uses the full building (unlike this store - more on that in a little bit).
Sedano's, like many Hispanic grocery chains in Florida, doesn't put as much emphasis on a "deli" department like a traditional supermarket chain does. Instead, the small selection of cold cuts these chains sell typically gets lumped into the service meat and seafood counter, which was the case here. When the old deli space was closed off and the building was reconfigured to have a smaller salesfloor, Sedano's moved the service meat and seafood counter to the back wall, just to the right of where Albertsons' original deli was located. Compared to many supermarkets, the meat and seafood service counter is quite large here, but Sedano's, as well as the other Hispanic chains in Florida, sell a lot of meat and seafood. These counters are easily one of the busiest departments in the entire store, and usually have a line of people waiting for meats. Me being here so early in the day, there really wasn't anyone here buying meat yet, but later in the afternoon these counters look like the Pub Sub line during lunch rush!
The left-most part of the service meat and seafood counter lines up with the edge of Albertsons' former deli space, with the back wall transitioning to more meat coolers as we continue further into the right side of the store.
A year or two after my visit to this store, Sedano's remodeled it to a very blah beige decor with a few new wall signs (a massive downgrade from Sedano's actual current decor, which is pretty nice, even if it is still heavy on the beige and gray). Some new aisle markers were hung but that looks to be the extent of the changes in this store, a much less dramatic transformation in this building than what occurred recently at the Homestead Alberdano's (a remodel that was quite the tragedy in my opinion, going from the best preserved Grocery Palace in the land to the new beige-gray look - the photo at the second link in this text block was taken in the Homestead store if you want to compare the before and after).
Having seen just about all of the service departments in this store, it's time to head into the grocery aisles for the remainder of this tour.
Stepping out of the grocery aisles, here's a look across the front end.
The department in the distance along the right side wall is dairy, which the check lanes run all the way up to.
The grocery aisles in this store are pretty tall, with the top shelves appearing to be actual merchandise for sale and not overstock from the shelves below.
Part of the reason for those taller shelves, if you haven't noticed it already looking toward the right side of the store, is because Sedano's shrunk this building's salesfloor at some point. We saw Sedano's do something similar at the former Kissimmee Alberdano's store during our post-closure tour back in 2023, and it appears this store went through a similar size-reduction at some point (whether that was in the late 2010's like the Kissimmee store following declining sales, or if this salesfloor reduction was original from 2001 with Sedano's not knowing what to do with all that space, I do not know). I do know this store is home to Sedano's automated fulfillment center (more on that here and here), which could have needed extra space for staging (hence the salesfloor reduction, as that center sounds pretty big), but there's also a chance that walled-off area could just be sitting empty and unused like we saw in Kissimmee.
By walling off the right side of the building, Sedano's essentially eliminated the space where Albertsons' meat and seafood counter, pharmacy, and beer and wine departments were located. From the look of things, only two-thirds of the original salesfloor is still in use by Sedano's, so this is still a decently-sized store.
You can tell there's additional space behind that wall with the way the light strip closest to the front wall continues through a small gap in the partition. Otherwise this looks like a pretty solid, legitimate partition wall and not just a cheap way to blockade an unused portion of the salesfloor.
Getting closer to the partition, you'll notice the tile pattern on the floor has more large white gaps between the gray Tetris pattern. Those white gaps appear to designate where Sedano's patched the floors when Albertsons' original frozen food coolers were removed, which were located in this general area (for reference, here's a map of a similar store with its original floor plan, that example just mirrored from what this location looked like). Sedano's pushed frozen foods into the last aisle against the partition, so a decent amount of work went into shrinking this store considering the utility work too.
Cleaning supplies in aisle 9...
…and switching back to food items with chips and soda in aisle 10.
The second to last grocery aisle, aisle 11, is home to beer (to my right) and frozen foods (to my left). Seems a bit random to see pallets of toilet paper stacked on top of the beer coolers!
Here's a final look across the back wall of the store, showing the amount of salesfloor space Sedano's actually occupies here.
The world-renowned aisle 12 is this store's last aisle, home to the remainder of frozen foods and dairy along the partition wall.
With aisle 12 not being super wide, the beer pallets down the middle of it make this aisle feel quite cramped.
Back up front we find the check lanes again, with the bakery visible in the background.
Like most Sedano's stores, there is a small area of independent storefronts clustered along some of the extra space on the front end. Some beauty services, a Metro by T-Mobile store, and a jeweler appear here, at least within the photo frame. The area where these tenants are located used to be home to Albertsons' customer service desk and other services, such as video rentals and a bank.
Even with all the work Sedano's did to this building, one other obvious Albertsons remnant has remained in this building since 2001 - the turntable checklanes! While other grocers may have used these through the years, these turntable lanes will always be associated with Albertsons in my mind.
Much like the turntable for placing one's groceries, the bagging area also had a matching turntable. The Albertsons I shopped at most often had regular belt check lanes, but still had the turntable bagging areas. I always liked when a bagger wasn't available and I got to used to turntable to bag my groceries!
Back outside, here's another look at the store's Spanish-style facade, a nice design overall and a nice fit for the area too, as this is a common architectural style in Miami-Dade County.
Located on the left side of the building is Albertsons' old liquor store, seen here.
A liquor store still occupies the space - Mega Wine & Spirits, a small South Florida-based liquor chain. Mega Wine & Spirits occupies the liquor space in all 3 of the Miami-Dade and Broward Alberdano stores, in addition to being the liquor tenant for the lone Miami-Dade Publixsons too.
This former Albertsons stood as an independent building on this property until 2011, when an architecturally-identical shopping center was constructed on the east side of the property, in addition to adding storefronts to both sides of the old Albertsons building too. The copying of Albertsons' original architecture came out well!
We'll end our ground coverage with this photo of the road sign facing SW 147th Avenue, also installed in 2011 when the plaza was expanded.
For some additional perspectives, here are some Bird's Eye aerial photos of this former Albertsons, courtesy of Bing Maps:
Front
Front - Pre-2011 perspective - We can see here what the building looked like with Sedano's original signage and before the storefronts to the left and right sides were added.
Right Side
Back
Left Side
And now for some historic aerial perspectives, courtesy of Google Earth:
Former Albertsons #4437 - 2022
Former Albertsons #4437 - 2011 - The shopping center additions under construction
Former Albertsons #4437 - 2005
Former Albertsons #4437 - 2002 - Shortly after Sedano's opened
Albertsons #4437 - 1999 - Compared to Sedano's, you can see how how terrible Albertsons was doing with that kind of crowd...
Future Albertsons #4437 - 1994
I only have three of the four Albertsons stores that actually operated in Miami-Dade County photographed (yes, #4459 in Homestead has been my problem child - the only former Albertsons in the Florida Peninsula I've yet to visit), and now all of the ones I've visited have been posted to the blog. For the time being all of our future Albertsons-related coverage in Miami-Dade County will be of the three remaining unopened stores Albertsons had in the pipeline had they not pulled out of the county in 2001. Even though none of those stores ever got to see an Albertsons sign on the front of them, two of the three of those stores are actually super interesting in their current forms, so there's still plenty more to see down here. In two weeks we'll check out another Miami-area supermarket, just not one Albertsons had any involvement in, which was still quite the unusual sight. However, before we get to that, I'd also like to announce there will be two bonus posts this month as well. What would have been my two off Sundays this month (4/12 and 4/26) I will be featuring two short update posts, getting us caught up on some recent happenings at some former Albertsons stores we've toured in the past. A lot to come this month, so be sure to come back next Sunday for the first of those two updates!
Happy Easter everyone, and until the next post,
The Albertsons Florida Blogger
