Albertsons #4379
4300 Clarcona-Ocoee Road, Orlando, FL - Clarcona Crossings
From the death of an Albertsons we find the River of Life. While that sounds like a deeply metaphorical opening line with some powerful symbolism behind it, where we compare and contrast an old supermarket building with the mysteries of life, it's nothing more than me making some silly word play with the name of the church that now operates out of this place. So if you read that line and were hoping you'd find some deep philosophical ponderings about life in today's post, you're out of luck. If you came here looking to see what's happened to another one of the many former Albertsons stores that once dotted the Floridian landscape, then you're in luck, as that's going to be the subject of today's post! (We can ponder life's mysteries another time...)
Today's former Albertsons store opened in 1990 at the intersection of North Orange Blossom Trail and Clarcona-Ocoee Road, as part of a new shopping center called Clarcona Crossings. This little pocket of Northwestern Orlando, officially a part of the city's Rosemont neighborhood, boomed with development in the late 1980's as numerous corporations began to move their local headquarters to this part of town. With the move of the companies, more residents began looking for homes out this way to be close to their jobs. As you'd expect, with the construction of new homes came the subsequent construction of new retail. Following on the heels of a new Publix in a shopping center next door, Albertsons was the major anchor for the first phase of the new Clarcona Crossings shopping center. Phase 2 of the Clarcona Crossings development, which was to include the plaza's second anchor, was to begin in Spring 1991 and include 100,000 additional square feet of retail space (with most of that square footage dedicated to the second anchor). For reasons unknown, that second phase never materialized, and a large grassy pad now sits at the far western edge of Clarcona Crossings as a reminder of what never came to be (which we'll see later in the satellite imagery).
Albertsons had a decent run here in Rosemont, with this store lasting until a small wave of store closures in late 2008. After Albertsons closed, the building sat vacant until 2012 (or there about), when River of Life Church remodeled the building to turn the former Albertsons store into their new home. While the church gutted and rebuilt the interior, the exterior (although a bit dressed up with some new stone veneer and detailing) is the same from the Albertsons days.
Even with some new paint and decorative stone, it's still quite obvious this building used to be home to an Albertsons. As soon as you look at each side of the building, you'll notice the preserved Superstore-era entry vestibules were left completely in-tact.
Albertsons' old liquor store was attached to the left side of the building. The church took over that space as well, and turned it into the Kid's Room (about as opposite as you can get from a liquor store!).
The left side entryway, which would have led Albertsons' shoppers into the pharmacy side of the store, is now labeled as the church's welcome center. I feel the way the above photo was taken really pronounces all the old Albertsons features of the building, especially since both of the entryways are visible in this shot.
The right side entryway, which would have led shoppers into Albertsons' fresh departments, is pictured here. From what I can tell, the "Welcome Center" entrance appears to be the church's main entryway, with this entrance being used as either a side door or emergency door only.
Here's a close-up of the right side door. Albertsons' original lights are still visible under the overhang too, so the church's modifications to the exterior were all cosmetic in nature.
I don't know why I took this random photo of the wall, but this post was rather short, so I decided to keep it instead of toss it.
Here's one final close-up of the building's exterior, that Albertsons feel still going strong nearly 10 years after its conversion into a church.
I visited this former Albertsons on a weekday morning, which isn't exactly prime time to find anyone hanging around at a church. As you can tell by the parking lot, the place was dead while I was here, which made for convenient photo taking. However, as I was pulling out of the parking lot after getting my last few photos, a pickup truck passed by me going the opposite direction. When I was about to pass that pickup truck, the driver stopped and rolled down his window, like he wanted to say something to me. Since I had just finished taking photos (in a not-very-secretive manner, to note, since the place appeared to be dead), I was convinced he was going to start asking me questions about what I was doing. I wasn't in any mood for a confrontation, so I just blazed by the guy and got back on the road. Maybe I was being a bit jumpy, but you never know if someone is going to get a little too offended that you're taking pictures of their building (as we've all heard the stories about that from others in this hobby!).
Since the church is only active at certain times during the week, that makes the plaza seem more dead than it really is. From what I remember, much of the plaza to the right of the old Albertsons was empty, with most of the plaza's remaining tenants located in the strip of stores to the left of the Albertsons building.
While I'm over here, here's a quick look at the strip of stores branching out from the left side of the old Albertsons building.
Dollar General was the primary draw to the center during my visit, as it was one of the only businesses that had opened for the day when I was here.
As we leave, here's a look of all that remains from Clarcona Crossings Phase 2: a large grassy field. Looking at the satellite imagery (which we'll see in a moment), it looks like Phase 2 was supposed to include the addition of a big-box discounter. The lot is the perfect size for an early 90's Kmart, non-super Walmart, or Target, and at the time, none of those chains had a presence in this part of town. I'm sure the developer was going after one of them to build a store here, and either none of them took the bait, or the deal fell through. I've gone through the county records and never could confirm what was supposed to go here, so the Phase 2 plans must not have made it very far into the actual development stage.
This little monument sign is what greets you now as you drive by the plaza on Clarcona-Ocoee Road, however, the was a time when you would have seen this instead:
It would have been a more interesting sight had the photo been taken before Albertsons closed, but at least we get to see the entire sign in original form.
And thanks to Orange County's stockpile of old property assessor photos, here's a quick glimpse at what this place looked like when Albertsons was still here. Just remove the stone veneer and curved trim, and you have yourselves an Albertsons.
However, to top that exterior photo, I was actually able to find an interior photo of this store, though from shortly after Albertsons closed in late 2008. I downloaded this photo a long time ago from some random website that probably doesn't exist anymore. While the photo isn't of the highest resolution, you can still see this store closed with the Grocery Palace decor, meaning Albertsons took the time to remodel this place at least once during its 18 year run.
While that was a nice little trip back in time, we've now moved on to the satellite imagery part of today post. As usual, first we have some Bird's Eye aerial images of the store, courtesy of Bing Maps:
Front
Right Side
Back
Left Side
And now some historic satellite images, courtesy of Google Earth and historicaerials.com:
Former Albertsons #4379 - 2021 - In this image, you can see the giant hole in Clarcona Crossings where the mysterious Phase 2 was to go. The property was cleared and graded for the new building and its parking lot, all of which never happened. Immediately to the right of the Albertsons plaza is the old Publix plaza. Publix opened a few years before Albertsons, and is one of the rare instances of a Publix that closed outright in the late 2000's. The Publix building is currently split between dd's Discounts and Save A Lot.
Former Albertsons #4379 - 2014
Former Albertsons #4379 - 2009
Albertsons #4379 - 2002
Albertsons #4379 - 1995
Future Albertsons #4379 - 1980 - While there wasn't much out this way back in 1980, we do have a nice look at the old Ri Mar Drive-In theater, which closed in 1996 and has since been redeveloped into a home for some new buildings.
Now that we've finished our tour of the former Rosemont Albertsons, that also marks a momentous occasion for the blog. Posting these photos of Albertsons #4379 means that I now have coverage of every Albertsons store in the greater Orlando area posted in some form - the first major metropolitan area in Florida I can say that for! I've actually had these photos of store #4379 sitting around for a long time, but me being me, just got to them now. Better late than never I suppose!
Anyway, that's all I have to say about this store. We'll be staying in the Orlando area for our next post, which will be an update of sorts for something we're already seen before. The next post will be an interesting before and after tour, so be sure to come back in two weeks for that!
So until the next post,
The Albertsons Florida Blogger
