Albertsons #4360 / Western Beef Supermarket / Broward Meat & Fish Co.
8030 Pines Boulevard, Pembroke Pines, FL - University Marketplace
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| Today's post is a presentation of Broward County retail |
Just like Pinellas County on the west coast, Broward County also had 15 Albertsons stores at one time, those two counties tying for the most Albertsons stores in a single county in Florida. Unlike Pinellas though, not all 15 of Broward's Albertsons stores were success stories that lasted into the 2000's - Broward had a fair number of Albertsons closures in the 1990's - but still, I'd say Broward County and Pinellas County were Albertsons strongholds overall, especially since both counties managed to have a store that lasted into the Safeway era. While I've done a fair amount of work chipping away at the 15 Pinellas Albertsons stores - I only have one more of those to bring to the blog - I still have a little work to do here in Broward. I still have 3 more Broward Albertsons stores to post after this one, so I guess I better start somewhere! Today we'll be taking a look at the first of the two Albertsons stores to call Pembroke Pines home. Located on the easternmost side of town, the older Pembroke Pines Albertsons (#4360) was by far more successful than its newer counterpart on the west side of town (#4439), the newer store only lasting 7 years before closing in the early 2000's. The eastern store managed to last 24 years before closing for good, yet another demonstration of Albertsons' hit or miss success with stores throughout Broward. Let's start off today's post by taking a little time to learn more about the eastern Pembroke Pines Albertsons before we jump into our tour of what has become of this store today:
Like many of the suburbs of Fort Lauderdale, Pembroke Pines started out as a quiet residential community in the early 1960's. As South Florida's population surged in the coming decades, Pembroke Pines has since grown into Broward County's second largest city - a very wide but narrow city spanning from Florida's Turnpike in the east to US 27 in the west. The backbone of Pembroke Pines in Pines Boulevard, the main east-west thoroughfare and retail strip throughout town, spanning the city's entire length. Both of Pembroke Pines' Albertsons stores were located along Pines Boulevard, with the first of those stores, #4360, built at the southwestern corner of Pines Boulevard and University Drive near the city's first neighborhoods from the 1960's.
Albertsons #4360 opened for business on July 9, 1986, the main anchor to the new University Marketplace shopping center. According to Broward County Property Records, Albertsons was supposed to co-anchor the new shopping center with a Richway discount store. However, in 1986 Richway was sold to Federated Department Stores - the beginning of the end for that chain. With construction on the Pembroke Pines Richway planned to begin right around the time of the sale to Federated, it appears the chain's sale, along with Federated's own financial troubles, brought an end to those plans. Richway would end up disappearing as a brand in 1988, when the remaining stores were sold to Target. After Richway's plans were dissolved, a Phar-Mor would eventually be built as the plaza's secondary anchor in 1991.
A fairly typical late 1980's "superstore" Albertsons, #4360 had at least one remodel during its time in business, that being a remodel to Blue and Green Awnings occurring sometime in the late 1990's.
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| I wish my elementary school took us on a field trip to Albertsons! |
The article above about a math scavenger hunt night held at this store gives us a glimpse at its interior in 2000, showing a little bit of the Blue and Green Awnings texturing on the wall above the front end. Like most late 1980's "superstores", this store would have opened with the Blue & Gray Market decor.
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| Photo courtesy of a really old real estate listing |
In the photo above, the Albertsons is the building with the brown roof closest to the intersection, with the planned Richway site to the right of that. When the Richway plans fell through, the strip of stores in the adjoining shopping center was extended, with the anchor building shrunken down to accommodate the much smaller Phar-Mor (which was long gone by the time the image above was captured).
The east Pembroke Pines Albertsons managed to hold out and become the second-to-last Albertsons store to close in Broward County, its run in the county only eclipsed by that of the Oakland Park store (#4319), which survived until 2018 at the end of the Safeway era. #4360 remained until February 2010, grouped into a closing round that took out all the remaining South Florida Albertsons stores except Oakland Park and Key West.
The closure of those South Florida Albertsons stores in early 2010 presented some opportunity to other grocers wanting to expand in the area. Having entered Florida with a single store in a former Winn-Dixie in Boca Raton in 2009, Western Beef purchased two of Albertsons' 2010 closures to continue the chain's Floridian expansion. In addition to buying old #4486 in Lake Worth, Western Beef also purchased the former Pembroke Pines location.
Western Beef was another one of the many random Northeastern chains that skipped down to Florida after jumping over most of the Eastern Seaboard. Primarily located in and around New York City, Western Beef was a chain of roughly 30 stores that took the Floridian plunge to capture the recognition of the many New York transplants that now called South Florida home. While meats were a large focus for Western Beef (considering "beef" was in the company's name), Western Beef ran full-service supermarkets with a slight Hispanic angle - not quite to the extent of stores like Sedano's and Bravo, but with more of the harder-to-find Hispanic products in a more main-stream feeling store (as long as you didn't find Western Beef's smiling cartoon decor to be too creepy, at least).
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| Photo courtesy of yelp.com |
Western Beef opened its Pembroke Pines store on July 17, 2011, following a decent remodel to the former Albertsons building. Since Western Beef's stores skewed more to the smaller side, the chain only took over three-quarters of the former Albertsons space, walling off the remainder. Western Beef also built out a new large meat department and walk-in meat room on the salesfloor, which took over a sizeable portion of Albertsons' old produce department.
Following the addition of the two former Albertsons stores, Western Beef ended its Floridian expansion there. The 3 stores did their thing for a few years, with the company eventually selling its Pembroke Pines store to the Broward Meat & Fish Company in 2017 (and in case you were curious, the other two Floridian Western Beef stores managed to survive until 2024, when the chain completely exited Florida). Broward Meat & Fish Company is a store very similar to Western Beef - a chain with a large focus on meats and seafood (as the name implies), with a slightly Hispanic-skewing grocery format. Unlike Western Beef, Broward Meat & Fish is a locally owned chain based out of nearby North Lauderdale, with this being the chain's 3rd of its current 4 store fleet throughout the county.
Broward Meat & Fish didn't change much about this building from how Western Beef left it, mostly cleaning up the inside and adding some new decor in there, while leaving the original Albertsons exterior design in-tact.
The Pembroke Pines Albertsons was one of the first Albertsons stores to open in Florida following the end of the chain's river rock walls era. The first two Albertsons "superstores" in Florida carried on the river rock tradition, with #4360 being one of the first to receive an entirely stucco look.
Approaching the walkway, we encounter Albertsons' right side entryway doors, which now serve as the only entrance and exit into Broward Meat & Fish (and previously Western Beef). It appears it was Western Beef who swapped out Albertsons' original swinging doors with these sliding ones, although these sliding ones are arranged exactly how the swinging doors would have been set up.
Although repainted, the vestibule is still the same as it was in the Albertsons days. The shopping carts in the cartwell just ahead of me appear to be recycled carts from Western Beef, considering the bright orange accents that Western Beef liked to use in their stores.
Turning the corner into the main store, here's a look into the front right corner of the building, home to the deli and cafeteria.
The location of the deli was carried over from Albertsons, located along the front wall in the front right corner of the building. While Broward Meat & Fish Co. did have a small deli, most of the space was dedicated to a hot foods counter, typical of Hispanic-leaning supermarkets in South Florida. While Broward Meat & Fish opted for the Florida-style cafeteria arrangement, Western Beef would have had a more New York-style arrangement in here, opting for a large traditional deli counter like this instead (the Lake Worth store pictured at that link).
The area immediately in front of the deli counter was home to a dining area for the cafeteria, a popular place on this particular afternoon.
Moving further back from the deli, the "grand aisle" begins to open up into the bakery and produce.
While Western Beef had a full-service in-store bakery, Western Beef (at least in its Florida stores) didn't operate a full-service bakery counter. The bakery was all arranged in pre-packaged and self-serve selections, an arrangement Broward Meat & Fish carried over.
Albertsons' service bakery counter would have been located in this general area, closed in by Western Beef during their remodel into a self-service bakery operation.
When Albertsons was here, produce would have stretched the entire length of the grand aisle along the right side of the store. However, Western Beef pushed the produce department further up in order to install their famous walk-in meat room, a feature Broward Meat & Fish also kept (at least in location), redecorating it with their own decor as seen above.
There was one small technicality as far as Broward Meat & Fish's repurposement of Western Beef's meat room - while the room itself was kept, Broward Meat & Fish stopped using the room as one large refrigerator like Western Beef would have had. Broward Meat & Fish ripped out the doors into the room and installed traditional meat coolers throughout, which makes meat shopping much more pleasant when you aren't freezing the entire time!
The meat service counter is located within the meat room, with the majority of the pre-packaged meats located in the coolers out front.
Back out on the main salesfloor, additional meat coolers can be found on the side of aisle 1, the store's first grocery aisle. The seafood service counter can be seen in the corner at the end of the aisle as well, but we'll loop back there in a little bit.
Returning to the front of the store, here's one final look back toward the deli and cafeteria before we press on toward the grocery aisles.
Doing a 180 from what we just saw in the previous photo, looking across the store's front end, it looks much more Albertsons-y up here than in any other part of the interior we've seen so far! The raised ceiling over the front end, in addition to the catwalk windows, is a classic 1980's Albertsons superstore staple, and it was nice to see all that survive the remodel. Broward Meat & Fish added a suspended ceiling over their check lanes as well, which actually pairs well with the higher ceiling left over from Albertsons.
Entering the grocery aisles, anyone up there on the store's second level could peek down and spy on those wandering the salesfloor.
The flooring we see in here was installed by Western Beef, as we saw the same blue diamond pattern in Western Beef's Lake Worth store. Somewhat of a strange flooring pattern for Western Beef to use, as blue diamonds didn't really pair well with that chain's orange and green color scheme. On the other hand, Western Beef's tile choices go very well with Broward Meat & Fish's light blue decor scheme.
Returning to the store's back wall, here's a look at the large seafood service counter, located in roughly the same area where Albertsons would have had a similar counter of their own.
Following seafood, the back wall switched over to a small bulk foods department, with dairy coming into view along the left side wall in the distance.
In addition to the bags of bulk rice located in the back left corner, additional bulk bags of rice could be found here in aisle 4 too.
In the center of the salesfloor, we find the frozen food aisles. This store has a somewhat different frozen food set-up, at least from my experiences. Usually you see the open coffin coolers between two sets of freezer doors, but here, the freezer doors are only on aisle 5 - the far side of aisle 6 is home to more dry groceries.
Partially visible in the last photo, here's a little surprise for everyone I spotted in aisle 6 - an Albertsons cart! The logos were blocked out with cardboard, but these Albertsons carts are pretty easy to recognize. It appears this cart has been floating around the building for employee use, with it being used for empty boxes at the time of my visit.
Following the aisle and a half of frozen foods, a we find a few more grocery aisles before we reach the end of the salesfloor.
Before we turn the corner into the last grocery aisle, here's one final look down the back wall, looking back toward the meat room.
Aisle 9 is the store's last grocery aisle, home to dairy. The dairy coolers are located along the partition that divides Broward Meat & Fish from the sliver of leftover space that's been sitting unused since Albertsons closed.
The store was split so the entire original catwalk would still be accessible from the supermarket space, avoiding a weird split of the upper level. From aisle 9, we can actually see the doors for the upstairs employee bathrooms through the windows. Those bathrooms are located off the employee breakroom, which is located just to the left of those two doors.
Back downstairs, the front left corner of the building is home to beer and wine. The portion of the store that was cut off would have originally housed Albertsons' beer and wine department (the remnants of which are probably right behind the wall of the current beer and wine department), as well as the pharmacy counter and health and beauty.
Back at the front end, here are a few final photos of the raised ceiling over the check lanes - you know I had to get a few different angles of this distinctly Albertsons feature!
This photo didn't turn out all that great, but it will have to do for our final interior photo of this store.
Back on the front walkway, here's a look down the front of the building. The windows to my right are the windows that look into the original right side vestibule (the one that's now Broward Meat & Fish's main entrance).
These superstore Albertsons structures typically had a little notch (shown above) in the front of building. I don't know if these notches had a specific purpose, but it did come in handy as a place for Broward Meat & Fish to store some extra carts out of the way!
Approaching the left side vestibule, the access into the closed-off portion of the store, we find all of its windows shuttered over.
Much like the windows out front, the left side doors were also shuttered over too, so no glimpses inside to see what, if any, Blue and Green Awnings remnants may have been left behind. From the looks of it, Broward Meat & Fish must control the empty sliver of the building. It doesn't appear to be actively offered for lease, so I wonder if this sliver of the building could currently being used as storage by Broward Meat & Fish.
Out on the left side of the building, we find the entrance into Albertsons' old liquor store. Following Albertsons' departure, their former liquor store space has since become home to an independent liquor store called "Liquors for You".
While the liquor store has been decently remodeled in the time since Albertsons closed, including new front doors and new flooring, it looks like some Blue and Green Awnings remnants may live on inside - looking at this picture, it appears the Blue and Green Awnings crown molding trim still lives on, just repainted.
Having wrapped up our coverage of the east Pembroke Pines Albertsons, here's an overview of the entire University Marketplace shopping center. Albertsons was the large building all the way to the right, with its former co-anchor, Phar-Mor, located in the large building all the way to the left.
As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, a Richway discount store was supposed to be Albertsons' original co-anchor at the University Marketplace. When those plans fell through for the reason mentioned prior, the landlord had to go back on the hunt for a secondary anchor, eventually recruiting Phar-Mor to the site. While still smaller than the Richway would have been, the new Phar-Mor was massive for a store of that chain. The new Pembroke Pines Phar-Mor was a 65,000 square foot monster with an attached 6,000 square foot Phar-Mor Liquor store - in total over double the size of the store Phar-Mor was relocating from across the street, and one of the largest stores in the chain at the time. While the new store was chock full of Power Buys when it opened in 1991, it was a doomed store from the start. Only a year after it opened, it was exposed that Phar-Mor was essentially a front for a large embezzlement scheme. Following that discovery in 1992, the chain declared bankruptcy. The Pembroke Pines Phar-Mor would close in 1993 in a closing wave stemming from the embezzlement fallout.
After Phar-Mor closed, the building was subdivided into a few smaller tenants. Since it matches the old Albertsons' exterior, I'd have to guess the architecture we see here today is pretty close to what it looked like when Phar-Mor was here, with the doors reconfigured to accommodate all the new tenants.
From the front of the old Phar-Mor, here's a look across the shopping center back in the direction of the old Albertsons. Our Phar-Mor diversion out of the way, let's wrap up this post with some satellite imagery, starting off with some historic aerial views courtesy of the Bing Maps archives:
Front
Right Side
Back
Right Side
And now for some historic aerial views, courtesy of Google Earth and historicaerials.com:
Former Albertsons #4360 - 2024
Former Albertsons #4360 - 2017
Former Albertsons #4360 - 2011 - Pre-Western Beef
Albertsons #4360 - 2008
Albertsons #4360 - 2002
Albertsons #4360 - 1994
Future Albertsons #4360 - 1986 - This was a fun find - here's a look at the store under construction!
Future Albertsons #4360 - 1984
While that's all I have for this former Albertsons store, we'll be sticking around South Florida for our next post, where we'll be visiting a unique former supermarket. Be sure to come back in two weeks for that store!
So until the next post,
The Albertsons Florida Blogger
