Former Albertsons #4410 - Kissimmee, FL (Downtown) - How Does Its New Life "Compare"?

Albertsons #4410 / Sedano's #39 / Burlington & Compare Foods of Kissimmee

1100 N. John Young Parkway, Kissimmee, FL - Kissimmee Square (formerly Town Corral Shopping Center)

Today's post is a presentation of Osceola County retail

     Back in December 2023, we revisited the Downtown Kissimmee Albertsons in one of the most interesting and mesmerizing posts I've ever written, where we got to see this store during the fixture auction of the Sedano's Supermarket which occupied this building from 2009-2021. From the backrooms, to walled-off spaces, to an exclusive tour of the upper-level mezzanine, I don't think I'll ever be able to beat that post in terms of content! However, after seeing the store in that state, I thought it would only be best to bring old #4410's tale to a close, as we'll see why that fixture auction occurred in the first place today. As I mentioned at the end of the auction tour, following Sedano's closure, the landlord wanted to prep this building for a remodel as part of a rebranding for this older shopping center. Debuting the new name of "Kissimmee Square", the former Alberdano's was announced to be re-tenanted by Burlington and Compare Foods, with the old Albertsons Liquor store becoming home to Hibbett Sports. As you'd imagine from such an announcement, the building was mangled up pretty good during that conversion process, bringing an end to what was one of the best preserved Superstore-era Albertsons buildings left in Florida. However, much to my surprise, not all was lost here, and we'll use today for a quick look at what remains from Albertsons in this building's new form.

     From a quick glance of the exterior, you can tell just about all of the original Albertsons architecture was wiped away in the conversion process, which didn't give me much hope about finding any Albertsons remnants in either of the new tenant spaces. From passing by here during the conversion process, they did a pretty thorough gut and rebuild of the place, so, at least on the Burlington side, I was going into this with pretty low expectations (although when does anyone go into a Burlington with high expectations in general?). Compare Foods seemed like a bit of a wildcard, as I wasn't really sure how much money that chain was willing to throw into this remodel.

     The Kissimmee Square Burlington is the 6th location for the chain in town (7th if you count the Poinciana store, which uses a Kissimmee address), a rather high concentration of Burlingtons if you ask me for a town of 80,000 (and if you think that's a lot, don't get me started on Kissimmee's 9 Ross Dress for Less Stores - and that's excluding the 3 dd's Discounts too!). Kissimmee must really like off-price clothing stores, I suppose! Anyway, the Kissimmee Square Burlington held its grand opening on March 8, 2024, the first of the 3 new tenants to open in the former Albertsons space.

     Hibbett Sports was the second tenant to open in the former Albertsons building, opening a week after Burlington on March 16, 2024. Like the Burlington next door, Hibbett completely gutted and rebuilt the old liquor store space.

     I didn't go inside the Hibbett store, but I did pop into Burlington while I was here, so we'll briefly take a look in there before moving over to the much more interesting Compare Foods side of the building:

     I feel like Burlington's new stores shrink by some degree every year. This location is only about 20,000 square feet, which I think is even smaller than the average TJMaxx these days. With Burlington chasing after spaces that small these days, I can only imagine what their lingering 80,000 square foot stores look like now in terms of stock. Anyway, after stepping inside, the store's salesfloor is set up in a loop, with the pathway straight in front of you (the one above) leading you to housewares, toys, and women's clothing. The path loops around in the back before coming up the other side of the building toward men's clothes.

     More housewares line the back of the store, but not much else from Albertsons, except one thing...

     Tile scars from the old Blue and Gray Market floor pattern exist throughout the store, the only thing I noticed in here remaining from the Albertsons days. Burlington occupies the entire walled-off space from Sedano's linked to in that photo, so yes, can you believe that picture was taken from basically the same spot just 4 years prior?

     Coming up the other side of Burlington's race track loop, we find mens' clothing along the store's left side wall, with the check lanes located under the Burlington logo seen ahead on the front wall.

     The second level mezzanine was wiped away from existence on this side of the building, and considering how Burlington essentially rebuilt the facade, there's not even a clue it was ever here.

     I had a funny feeling most of my readers probably weren't interested in a long drawn-out tour of a Burlington store (especially one with hardly any traces of a former Albertsons in it), so I just made my quick run around the perimeter of that store before moving next door to Compare Foods.

     Compare Foods was a bit of a surprise to see show up here, as the original Compare Foods chain is primarily located around New York City, Long Island, Southern New England, and New Jersey, with a few isolated stores in North Carolina too. This Kissimmee store is the first (and from what I can tell, only) location for Compare Foods in Florida, and appears to operate totally independent of the main NYC-based chain (as you may have seen, the Kissimmee store doesn't show on the main chain's locator linked before - it has its own independent website with a totally different formatting). I'd have to guess someone purchased the naming rights to Compare Foods for Florida and built their own store around the name recognition from former New Yorkers now living in the area. With all the new Hispanic grocery chains popping up around Orlando of late (include a few other NYC-area transplant chains), it will be interesting if Compare expands any more in Florida or if they'll end up being a one-store operation (or sell out to one of the bigger operators locally, like Key Foods or Presidente Markets).

     Compare Foods was the final of the 3 tenants to open in the former Albertsons building, not opening until December 19, 2025. Compare did a pretty thorough job remodeling this side of the building, but I'll save the best Albertsons remnant for last.

     Compare Foods occupies the side of the building that once housed Albertsons' deli, bakery, and produce departments, all of those departments basically occupying the same locations today, just modernized and cleaned up quite a bit. The "Delicatessen" in this store was primary acting as the hot foods lunch counter, typical of Floridian Hispanic grocers who put more emphasis on hot foods over cold cuts. Tables were set up in front of the deli and bakery for those wishing to eat in-store as well.

     The large, elaborate produce department extends down the remainder of the right side wall beyond the deli/bakery corner. I have to say, the decor, the displays, and the presentation of everything all look very nice!

     Back in 2015, this is what we'd be looking at from this same vantage point.

     Turning the corner onto the back wall, we find the meat and seafood coolers as well as the service butcher counter. Unlike many Hispanic grocers in Florida, which have large service meat counters, Compare's service counter was quite small, but the selection of pre-packaged meats more than made up for the small service counter.

You could probably argue this decor embodies quite a bit of Sweetbay 2.0 in it too.

     I have to say, I really like the decor in this place. One of the things that intrigued me the most about Compare Foods after I noticed it opened was the decor, because doesn't their decor look like an upscale variant of Albertsons/Safeway's Colorful Lifestyle decor? The fonts are a little different, but the concept is basically the same, just with Compare using a nicer, less blank background for the signage.

     Now that we've seen most of this store's perimeter, it's off to the grocery aisles for the final portion of this post.

     You can faintly see the scars from Albertsons' old floor tiles in the above photo, but the scars were not as apparent in here as they were over in Burlington. Compare appears to have paid for a much nicer floor treatment than Burlington did.

     Due to this store's small size, the lack of salesfloor space was made up for through the use of taller shelves like these.

     Seafood is located in the back left corner of the building, before the new partition wall separating Compare from Burlington.

     Frozen Foods occupy aisle 8 and half of aisle 9, with dairy occupying the left wall in aisle 9. It appears I forgot to get a picture of aisle 9 to show the dairy wall, but it wasn't anything too exciting. Wine was also located in the front left corner next to the check lanes, its signage visible in the distance here.

     This center cut-though aisle runs the entire width of the store, similarly to how Albertsons' grocery aisles were set up.

     Compare's front end included 7 staffed check lanes in addition to a bank of self-checkouts closest to the doors.

     And if you haven't seen it in the background of some of the other pictures already, unlike on the Burlington side of the building, Albertsons original mezzanine level did survive Compare's remodel, (just with a portion of the right side cut off, where the employee restrooms and part of the old breakroom were). Seeing how the building was split the way it was, that leads me to question if Compare reconfigured the mezzanine to take into account losing a portion of it or if there's a chopped off mostly original layout up there? I guess the mezzanine will always leave us with more questions than answers! Anyway, with the original mezzanine (partially?) left in place, the service desk appears to have not been altered much either, leaving us a semi-original front end courtesy of Albertsons!

     Looking at Compare's facade, it appears they just modified Albertsons' old right side vestibule by moving the doors to the front of the building and upgrading the facade to match Burlington's. Even with a few construction tricks, Compare wasn't completely able to erase as much from Albertsons as they wanted us to think!

     Over the last decade-plus we've seen this building a number of ways, and while the most recent renovations took much of the originality away, at least everything wasn't taken away from this building's past. Still, it's new form doesn't quite "compare" to what was here before, but I will say that Compare was a rather nice store overall and their remodel turned out quite well in the end. As for Burlington, it's a Burlington, and I didn't notice a large mess in this particular location as many others on the internet find in their local Burlington stores, so I'll give them that. Today's post will seemingly complete the tale of former Albertsons #4410, a building that's seen a lot of change just in the time this blog has been around!

Anyway, until the next post,

The Albertsons Florida Blogger

Gray is the New Green - The Other Side of The Green Interior

Winn-Dixie #285

5850 SW 73rd Street, South Miami, FL

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...

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