Albertsons #4324 / Winn-Dixie #644
1640 US Highway 19 North, Holiday, FL
After all those Publixsons stores we've seen lately - from the average to the foreign and to some about to meet the wrecking ball - it's time for a break, don't you think? Amongst all those Publixsons stores is another rarer, much more exotic type of Albertsons reuse, and that's the Winn-Dixiesons (or is it an Albert-Dixie?). While there are over 60 Publixsons stores out there (hence why we see so many of those on AFB), only 3 Winn-Dixiesons exist. With Winn-Dixie not in much of a position to buy and open new stores in the late 2000's when Albertsons was shedding the most stores in Florida, the Winn-Dixiesons became the rare breed it is. All 3 Winn-Dixiesons were products of some of Albertsons' earliest Floridian failures from the 1990's and the turn of the millennium, and are an oddly refreshing take compared to all the Publixsons stores out there. We've seen one Winn-Dixiesons on the blog already, a long, long time ago (over 9 years ago, to be exact), so we're way overdue for another look at how The Beef People can pull off a store in a former Albertsons building.
However, before we get too deep into what Winn-Dixie did to this building, let's go all the way back to the beginning, to the days of Albertsons #4324. Albertsons #4324 opened on August 9, 1978 as the first Albertsons store in Pasco County. Located just over the border from Pinellas County on US 19, the small enclave of Holiday was the perfect spot for an Albertsons store to compliment the company's strong cluster of stores being developed just to the south in Pinellas. Store #4324 would attract shoppers from not only Southern Pasco County, but also the northern Pinellas County cities of Tarpon Springs and Palm Harbor. Positioned at the intersection where US 19 and US 19 Alternate split (two of the most important North-South routes through the Pinellas Peninsula), Albertsons #4324 had a lot of potential from a real estate perspective.
However, unlike Pinellas County to the south, a county which could be argued as Albertsons' best performing market in Florida, Pasco County had a much harder time embracing Albertsons' new large-format one-stop-shop "stores of the future". Both of Albertsons' original Pasco County stores - #4324 and the infamous #4340 in Port Richey (which opened two years after this one) were shut down by Albertsons at the turn of the 1990's. #4340 was the first to close in 1990 after a 10-year run, and #4324 followed suit a year later on April 26, 1991. The closure of the Port Richey and Holiday Albertsons stores pulled Albertsons out of Pasco County entirely, however, Albertsons would return to Pasco County a year later with the purchase of the 7 Floridian Jewel-Osco stores in 1992, a purchase which gave Albertsons a store in Hudson (#4403).
Albertsons must have known for a while this store was on its way out and was searching for a new tenant to take the space, as per duckman66's research, Winn-Dixie held its grand opening in the old Albertsons building on May 16, 1991 - only three weeks following the closure of Albertsons. The new Winn-Dixie Marketplace served as a replacement for an older store located next door at Pappas Plaza - a big upgrade for that tiny 1960's Winn-Dixie! With only a three week gap between Albertsons' closing and Winn-Dixie's opening, I can only imagine the changeover was pretty cheap for that new Marketplace store, and I'd have loved to see what the interior of this store looked like for the first few years it was in business. I'm sure in those early days, the original Albertsons layout was preserved, probably with a cheap Neon Marketplace decor installation like this throughout the store. Anyway, back in the 1990's, Winn-Dixie had much deeper pockets than they do now, and the company was almost as crazy with store remodels back then as Publix is now, with many stores getting full remodels (or in some extreme cases, complete replacements) every 6-8 years. By the late 1990's Winn-Dixie had remodeled this store once again with a more thorough conversion into the top-of-the-line (for the time) Winn-Dixie Marketplace + Food Pavilion format. These 1970's Albertsons stores are about the same size as the largest of Winn-Dixie's own Marketplace stores, so there was plenty of room to add the Food Pavilion to this building. In the process of adding the Food Pavilion the store's interior layout was heavily reconfigured, so what we'll be seeing inside today is a weird combination of Albertsons relics mashed up with a typical late 1990's Winn-Dixie Marketplace layout.
Even with the fairly extensive late 1990's remodel, the exterior of the building is still mostly original to Albertsons. Since this was an early Albertsons closure, Albertsons never had the chance to remove the bank of windows along the front of the building or reconfigure the entrances. Besides Winn-Dixie switching out the original swinging doors with sliding ones and installing a curved glass solarium over the front walkway, what we see here is basically what the exterior would have looked like in the Albertsons days (and minus the bright red paint too). Considering how rare Winn-Dixiesons are, it's kind of strange seeing one of these old 1970's Albertsons buildings housing a Winn-Dixie, especially after becoming so numb to seeing this all the time! However, the oddities of this store extend well beyond the facade, as inside we'll begin to notice that there's more to the seemingly typical 1990's Winn-Dixie layout beyond what our first impressions may show:
Entering the store through the right side doors, we encounter a large section of weekly promotional and BOGO deals, followed by produce in the front right corner. From the vantage point in the photo above, we're looking from produce toward the front check lanes, with the ubiquitous Winn-Dixie Marketplace check lane drop ceiling front and center.
Floral is located in a small nook next to the entrance, as we see above behind all the beer and soda deals. Food Pavilion stores built by Winn-Dixie typically had wine in a small alcove where Floral is here (with floral on the right side wall between produce and the bakery), but that nook looks way to small to have ever been home to an extensive wine department. I believe floral may have been moved to this spot in the store's Post-Bankruptcy remodel from its Food Pavilion-era home next to the bakery, when the original location of Floral was converted into a natural foods department. Considering this store was a bit odd due to it being inherited from Albertsons, what's now the floral nook could have been home to something else originally, like a photo counter.
Oh well, there's really no use whining about where wine used to be, as these days wine has a nice new home just beyond the deli at the back side of the Food Pavilion. However, before we get to the slightly more potent grapes, we'll have to pass by the grapes in their original form as we turn our attention now to the produce department. Moving further into the front right corner of the store, we find this interesting sight - some construction going on in the produce department. While I was here, Winn-Dixie was in the process of adding a liquor store to this building, carving the new liquor store into the front right corner. While some space from the produce department was sacrificed in the name of booze, Winn-Dixie couldn't have picked a better spot for the new liquor store, as it was being built in the same spot where Albertsons' original liquor store was located. Back in the Albertsons days, from our vantage point above, we'd have been looking toward the store's side entrance, tucked into which would have been the old liquor store. When we return outside we'll catch a few glimpses at relics from Albertsons' liquor store, but even prior to the construction we see here, the interior remnants of the original liquor store and side entrance were pretty well covered over during the Food Pavilion remodel.
With a fairly clear view into the construction area behind the produce cooler, I was hoping some kind of long-lost Albertsons relic may have been exposed, but all I saw was a lot of dangling wires, some Down Down produce signage about to meet its end, and some other exposed supermarket guts, but nothing distinctively from Albertsons.
Turning the corner, it was pretty strange seeing the Down Down "Fruit & Vegetables" sign chopped in half like this, so I guess once the remodel was finished, Winn-Dixie would only be selling vegetables if you went by this sign! I'm actually quite curious to see what Winn-Dixie did with the produce signage in this store after the liquor store was completed, as Down Down had already been retired in favor of the Winn Win decor by the time construction began on this project in mid-2021. I can't find any updated photos of this area online either, so I wonder of Winn-Dixie dusted off the old Down Down stencils for the new produce signage, of if this store now has a green Winn Win produce department amongst all the Down Down signs.
From the front right corner of the building, here's a look from produce into the "Food Pavilion". The "Food Pavilion" may not be super impressive looking today (especially with the stripped down services, the rather blah look of a cheap Down Down remodel, and a chunk of the front corner removed for a new liquor store), but back in 1998 this would have been an impressive (and very pastel) sight.
I'd suspect most of this store's deluxe Food Pavilion offerings like the fruit bar, the soup and salad bar, and the "Deli Cafe" were all either removed or barely functional by the time this store remodeled to the Post-Bankruptcy decor in the late 2000's. The very front of the deli island would have originally been home to the "International Cheese Shop", which by the time of the Post-Bankruptcy remodel, was absorbed into the deli as additional space for prepared foods. That part of the island still serves the same function today, but the prepared foods section of the deli was rebranded in the Down Down remodel as the "Kitchen".
With the deli in the island, the bakery was relegated to the building's right side wall to complete the Food Pavilion "grand aisle". Just to give you an idea of how much effort Winn-Dixie put into remodeling this store to the Food Pavilion layout, all the service departments you see here used to be on the other side of the building when Albertsons was here (and in Winn-Dixie's earliest days). Winn-Dixie flipped around all the service departments in this store so everything conformed to the standard Marketplace Food Pavilion layout. Where I stood to take the photo above would have been home to Albertsons' Health and Beauty/General Merchandise items, with the pharmacy on the back wall where Winn-Dixie's seafood counter is now. Winn-Dixie actually put a lot of work into this building (and the same holds true for the other 2 Winn-Dixiesons as well) compared to what we ever see Publix do to one of these buildings - if Publix wanted to flip around all the departments in one of these old Albertsons stores, they'd just do this instead.
Here's a close-up of the bakery department on the right wall. While the presentation and decor in the bakery might be different today than it was following the original construction of the Food Pavilion, the selection of baked goods today still looks pretty comparable to what was offered back then.
With the deli eventually expanding into most of the island, it's become a quite the spacious department. I feel the low-rise coolers surrounding the deli counter make it feel larger and more open today than it would have looked in the Food Pavilion days (and here's a comparison photo from the Post-Bankruptcy days as well).
While the deli counter itself looks quite spacious, this store's Food Pavilion was a bit narrower than one that would have been featured in a new-build store of the same design. As such, the grand aisle itself felt a bit cramped while I was here with all these displays in the middle of the aisle, and losing a chunk of space for the new liquor store wasn't helping either. There was a decent crowd in this store too while I was here, so all those people lingering in the grand aisle weren't helping with maneuvering in this department either! (Yes, Winn-Dixie does draw a crowd now - it's quite amazing what brand re-imaging can do when it's done right!)
Sliced bread occupies a shelf in the middle of the grand aisle, somewhat of an odd placement for that, but I guess it makes sense putting that near the bakery. Beyond that, however, is what most people would probably consider to be even more impressive than sliced bread - the beer department.
Chilled beer coolers line the right wall following the bakery, with a few pallet drops of beer in front of that. Wine was tucked in an alcove next to the deli in the center island, in what used to be home to the Food Pavilion seating area. However, considering this store's odd lineage and the lack of space up front for the original Wine Cellar, I don't know where wine originally was following this store's Food Pavilion remodel (possibly in one of the grocery aisles, as I can't think of any other place it would have been).
Rounding out the grand aisle we find the meat and seafood counter located in the back right corner of the building, approximately where Albertsons' pharmacy counter used to be - this corner transitioning from selling fish oil pills to the real thing!
Back in the day the seafood counter was much more interesting to look at, but the current Down Down design has a sleek look, even if the wall decor itself is just a red painted wall with the word "SEAFOOD" stenciled onto it.
Beyond the meat and seafood service counter, the meat coolers continue to extend down the back wall as we transition out of the grand aisle. As move further along into the rest of the store, that's where some of this store's Albertsons lineage begins to creep back out...
If you read this blog enough, as we leave the Food Pavilion, it should be very apparent the one key feature we see here that makes this store still feel a lot like an Albertsons today, even after Winn-Dixie moved all the departments around. Do you see it?
If the high ceilings and fluorescent tube light strips are what caught your eye, then you're only one step away from knowing too much about old Floridian supermarkets! With how thorough Winn-Dixie was with everything else in the late 1990's Food Pavilion remodel, I'm surprised they didn't bother to replace Albertsons' original lighting over the main salesfloor, especially since the Food Pavilion area got the standard-issue Winn-Dixie Marketplace rectangular lights of the time. I guess in the end replacing all these tube strips with the rectangular panels probably wouldn't have made much of a difference in terms of brightness, unlike when Publix swaps out Albertsons' original lights for their slightly dimmer ones.
Anyway, lighting aside, the photo above shows us the store's first grocery aisle, which runs along the back wall of the deli island. Aisle 1 is home to soda and other soft drinks, which is a pretty typical placement for those products in a Food Pavilion-era Winn-Dixie. However, staring all all these bottles of warm soda, do you know what some people call a warm soda?
Soda-pressing! (Ok, fine, the soda aisle probably isn't the best place to be picking up cheesy jokes, as cheesy jokes are best saved for the dairy department).
Approaching the front of aisle 1, we find the store's "Dollar Shop" - a common addition to stores that remodeled to Down Down in the late 2010's (particularly larger-sized stores).
From the Dollar Shop, here's a look across the front of the store (where the ceiling above the check lanes makes this building feel much more like a 1990's Winn-Dixie than a 1970's Albertsons).
The Dollar Shop spans the front ends of both aisles 1 and 2, with the aisle 1 side containing food products and aisle 2 containing the non-food items for the Dollar Shop. Also, much like Dollar Tree (or should I say, $1.25 Tree), Winn-Dixie's "Dollar Shops" also bumped prices up to $1.25 each for everything sold in this department around the same time Dollar Tree did.
The back wall of the building is home to the meat coolers, with a few meat coolers out in the middle of the aisle as well. One little oddity about the back wall is that when Albertsons was here, the meat coolers would have been set back just a little bit from the upper wall, like this. It appears Winn-Dixie moved the wall further back (presumably during the big Food Pavilion remodel) to extend the grocery aisles and allow for a wider back aisle. That maneuver may have also come at the expense of some backroom space, as well as the upper level mezzanine offices these 1970's Albertsons stores usually had, as I no longer see the windows at the top of the wall (unless they were only covered over).
The one bad thing about Winn-Dixie's Down Down decor is that is looks really bland at times, as everything just looks so white in this photo, with the bags of chips providing us with most of the color we see.
The flooring in this store is a carryover from its Post-Bankruptcy days, as Down Down remodels weren't known for replacement of the floors outside of the produce department, leaving us some interesting results at times. Thankfully the recent Winn Win remodels have been a bit more thorough on that front, as Marketplace decor remnants don't pair well with stark red walls!
This store must do decently well for Winn-Dixie, as the Down Down remodel bought about this store's 4th decor package over its 32 years in business. There are still a handful of Winn-Dixie stores out there waiting for their first remodel in almost 30 years, however, I have to give Winn-Dixie a lot of credit for giving the vast majority of those stores a refresh over the last few years, with many more remodels in the works for the remainder of this year too.
Even though I talked over it at the last photo, frozen foods begin in aisle 5 with a row of coolers lining one side of that aisle. Aisle 6 is completely dedicated to frozen foods, giving this store an aisle and a half of such goods. Even though this store's frozen food department is located in the middle of the store, Frozen Foods still managed to get a wall sign of its own on the back wall (which could have been lined up better with the actual department, but I guess it's close enough).
Looking into the store's back left corner, here we can bring home the bacon (along with some milk to wash it all down).
Pet supplies were located in aisle 8, with health and beauty off in the distance ahead:
The Down Down beauty departments are a nice pop of blue amongst all the red and white elsewhere in the store. The lit shelving toppers and the matching blue category markers give this department a nice cohesive feel all of its own.
From health and beauty, here's a look toward the customer service desk. Behind the desk is a row of frosted windows, behind which were (presumably) offices to replace the ones formerly on the back mezzanine.
From this perspective, the bacon is just calling you over, trying to draw your attention away from all the baby food and paper products located in this aisle.
Leaving the grocery aisles, here are a few final photos showing off the back of the store.
YonWoo was able to provide us with a perspective of the store's back wall from the Post-Bankruptcy decor days, although the swapping of the decor was the only major change to this building between his visit and mine.
Another oddity about this store (at least from a Winn-Dixie perspective) is that the last aisle is just a plain single aisle. 1990's Marketplace stores typically had a wide double aisle serving as the store's last aisle, so it's strange seeing a Marketplace era design with such a narrow last aisle! What's even crazier is that back in the Albertsons days, from where I was standing we would have been looking toward the bakery and deli counters from the back of produce - you'd never guess that was the case these days. Unfortunately there aren't any photos out there of what this store looked like when all those departments were still over here, but here's another Post-Bankruptcy era photo from YonWoo showcasing the dairy aisle from those days.
Finding ourselves at the front left corner of the building, we now find the pharmacy counter.
What's now the pharmacy counter would have been a part of the deli when Albertsons was still here, this corner going from pushing the prosciutto to popping the pills.
A few short aisles of pharmaceuticals were located in front of the pharmacy counter, beyond which we see the store's front end yet again.
In total Winn-Dixie had 6 full-service check lanes with 4 self-checkout lanes in addition to that, with pallets of soda and other BOGO deals filling the space where additional check lanes were housed in this store's early days.
With our interior tour complete, let's check out a few more things outside before we begin to wrap up our holiday to Winn-Dixiesons...
As I mentioned earlier (and was visible in some of the first few photos of this post), Winn-Dixie was in the process of adding a liquor store to the building while I was here. Construction of the new liquor store was still pretty early in the process while I was here, however, Google Streetview does have some imagery showing the liquor store now open (with the Dollar Shop sign getting bumped in favor of the Liquor store's new sign).
The new liquor store opened in late 2021, in the same place where Albertsons would have moved the liquor store in one of their later remodels (had Albertsons held onto this store into the early 2000's). When Winn-Dixie first took over this store from Albertsons in 1991, they had yet to dabble with liquor stores on their own (I believe the first of those opened sometime in the late 1990's, as some late-era Marketplace stores had liquor stores built in). The original Albertsons liquor store most likely sat abandoned until the big Food Pavilion remodel, when it was ripped out to be absorbed into additional salesfloor space for the new Food Pavilion.
And while there may no longer be any traces of the old liquor store inside the building, the wall jutting out from the side of the building is a pretty good reminder of what was on the exterior! If you look closely at the above image, you can see where the bricks don't quite match where the side entrance and liquor store window was covered, and the ramp leading to the side entrance is still in place too.
While this odd wall might seem out of place these days, it's a fun little reminder of this store's history for people who do know the secrets of this building's past.
Here's an overview of the store's entire right side wall, which is still quite original to Albertsons in terms of design.
With one final overview of the store's exterior, that does it for my ground coverage of this Winn-Dixiesons. Now we'll start to bring things to a close with some satellite imagery of this building, beginning with some bird's eye satellite images courtesy of Bing Maps:
Front
Right Side
Back
Left Side - Since this store backs right up that trailer park, the loading docks were moved to the left side of the building.
And now for some historic satellite imagery, courtesy of Google Earth and historicaerials.com:
Former Albertsons #4324 - 2021
Former Albertsons #4324 - 2012
Former Albertsons #4324 - 2002
Former Albertsons #4324 - 1998 - Business at Winn-Dixie has been picking up lately, but not quite to the extent like we see here in 1998! This store was doing something right back then to pack in all those people!
Former Albertsons #4324 - 1995 - Winn-Dixie must have been on to something with that Food Pavilion is this was the kind of crowd it drew!
Albertsons #4324 - 1984
Future Albertsons #4324 - 1971
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| Photo courtesy of YonWooRetail2 |
We'll wrap up today's post with this interesting photo YonWoo put together showing us what the building looks like as a Winn-Dixie compared to when it was an Albertsons (and that photo on the bottom is actually of #4324, and not a similar looking store). I doubt this store changed much during its 12-year run as an Albertsons, and I'm sure the original 1970's signage lasted until the store closed for good in 1991. Even though this store was a big flop for Albertsons, Winn-Dixie has enjoyed a vast amount of success with this store over the last 32 years. Hopefully our Winn-Dixiesons will continue on for many years to come, keeping this rare breed of Floridian Albertsons reuse out there for our enjoyment!
Since I haven't posted about Winn-Dixie in a while (today's post was my first Winn-Dixie related post in almost a year), we'll be doing a Winn-Dixie double take here on AFB for the month of May. While next time I may not have another Winn-Dixiesons up my sleeve, I do have some other funky Winn-Dixie stores to share with you. What Winn-Dixie will we see next time - come back in two weeks to find out!
So until the next post,
The Albertsons Florida Blogger
