Xtra Super Food Center #502 / Albertsons #4455
21401 NW 2nd Avenue, Miami Gardens, FL - County Square Shopping Center
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| Today's post is a presentation of Miami-Dade County retail. |
While the former Albertsons store we're touring today might not seem like much at first glance, this store actually has an interesting backstory, and even in its current life carried on the tradition of being quite the oddity. Old #4455 is another one of the Albertsons stores I would have loved to see while it was in business, as I feel this location wasn't the most straightforward Grocery Palace-era store to have opened. Every new tenant in this building seemed to have a strange take on what to do with it too, so let's jump right into this and learn a little more on the odd flop of a store #4455 was, and what Xtras it may have been hiding too:
When County Square Shopping center was first built in 1986, it originally featured an Xtra Super Food Center as its grocery anchor. It's been a while since we've talked about Xtra Super Food Center on the blog, but Xtra was a large-format warehouse-style grocer that traced its origins back to Puerto Rico. Owned by Puerto Rico-based grocery chain Supermercado Pueblo, the Xtra Super Food Centers concept originated in the early 1980's in the island territory, and after seeing exceptional results with the new format in Puerto Rico, Pueblo decided to use the Xtra Super Food Center format to enter the mainland United States. Pueblo chose South Florida to begin its mainland expansion, for reasons including the region's close proximity to Puerto Rico and its heavy concentration of Hispanic shoppers, a demographic Pueblo knew well. Launching in 1983 in Hialeah, Xtra Super Food Centers eventually grew into a small chain of around 10 stores in Florida, primarily located in the three South Florida counties - Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach - with a small expansion around Orlando as well. You can read more about the trials and tribulations of Xtra Super Food Centers in this post of mine from 2017, where we explored a much better preserved former Xtra store.
As for this particular location, the Miami Gardens Xtra Super Food Center opened in December 1986, located just over the Broward County line on busy US 441. The Miami Gardens Xtra was a 78,000 square foot behemoth, the Jewel-Osco of South Florida (size-wise, anyway - Xtra and Jewel-Osco were two totally different formats, but both were trying to make a statement with the size of their stores in a state where supermarkets always tended to skew on the smaller side).
During Xtra's run in this building, the company tried some unique ideas to help shoppers, one of which was hiring employees to roller skate around the store's large salesfloor to help shoppers locate items. The article above was written about a group of teenage roller skaters who worked at the Miami Gardens Xtra store, with a photo showing a tiny bit of the store's interior (as well as one of the skaters in action). Seems a bit risky having employees on roller skates navigating through a store filled with shoppers and merchandise displays to crash into (thankfully my old retail job didn't require roller skates, or that would have been me!), but I'm sure these guys had fun skating around the building all day! I'm not sure how long Xtra kept this service going for, but this article was published in 1987, toward the earlier years of the Miami Gardens store's life.
Also in the late 1980's, Xtra rolled out another unusual idea for a supermarket at the time - charging a 25 cent deposit for shopping carts. Reading what folks interviewed in the article had to say about the concept, I'm surprised much of the comments were praise, especially in the days before Aldi's widespread growth made 25 cent cart deposits a more common sight in the United States. The Miami Gardens Xtra was one of two Xtra stores in Dade County to pilot the cart deposit program, following a spike in cart thefts in the county at the time. The article also mentions how Publix and Winn-Dixie were interested in the concept of cart deposits at the time too - I'm not sure if either of those chains ever tried a pilot of cart deposits back in the late 1980's, but it would have been strange seeing those at a Publix. However, any day now we could be seeing those appear at Winn-Dixie in a more widespread fashion!
I don't know how well the cart deposits and roller skating employees worked out for Xtra in the short term, but they weren't enough to win over shoppers in the crowded South Florida supermarket scene of the late 1980's and early 1990's. By the early 1990's, Xtra's owner Supermercado Pueblo began to experience financial difficulties, and sold its supermarket holdings to a Venezuelan-based conglomerate in 1993 called Cisneros Group. By 1996, Cisneros Group wanted out of the grocery business to focus on its media holdings, and began selling off its grocery stores to any interested buyers. While a buyer did emerge for Cisneros's Puerto Rico-based supermarkets, no one made any bids for the 8 remaining Xtra stores left in Florida come 1996. With Cisneros wanting to offload those stores, the decision was made to close the remaining Florida Xtra stores that year, with Cisneros then selling all remaining sites to individual parties as they expressed interest in the buildings.
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| Xtra, Xtra, read all about it, and see a photo of this store as an Xtra too! |
The Miami Gardens Xtra closed in February 1996, leaving a large hole in the County Square Shopping Center. Xtra's departure also left the remaining tenants in the plaza with a 78,000 square foot hole and uncertainly about the futures of their own businesses with the anchor store now gone. However, it wasn't long after Xtra closed that rumors began to swirl about Albertsons expressing interest in the space, as discussed in the second part of the article above. This was a glimmer of hope for the neighboring tenants, but there would still be a small wait before any truth began to show from those rumors.
Xtra's fixture liquidation took place in August 1996, the ad for which I found in the Miami Herald. In the end, Albertsons did take over this site (as well as a second Xtra location up in Winter Park (#4423), although that Xtra closed in 1994 before the rest of the chain). While Albertsons did pull through in the end to take over this site, it took 4 years before the new Albertsons came to fruition, with Albertsons #4455 not opening until 2000. Unlike the former 80,000 square foot Jewel-Osco stores (which Albertsons took over in their entireties), both Xtra stores of similar size that Albertsons took over were subdivided. In #4423's case, Albertsons took over a roughly 60,000 square foot portion of that building, leaving the rest of the space for Books-A-Million to open up shop in. Here in Miami Gardens though, Albertsons took the renovation to a slightly larger extreme - while Albertsons kept roughly 60,000 square feet of the former Xtra for themselves, the remaining space Albertsons didn't want was torn down to make room for the new liquor store and a few small storefronts. Even with a chunk of the building ripped away, the remaining portion of the building was left mostly as-is as far as the design of the facade was concerned, and retained Xtra's original exterior styling, which is still present to this day.
While Albertsons pulled out of Miami-Dade County in 2001 after a spectacular failure there, #4455 was spared in the big pullout because of a geographic quirk. As I mentioned before, the northern edge of County Square's property line is Broward County. With this store being so close to Broward County, it was actually grouped in with Albertsons' Broward County stores in terms of managerial structure instead of Miami, letting it press on into the 2000's. Even so, #4455 was no spectacular success, with this store quietly closing sometime in 2007 after only 7 years in business (its last mention of being in business came from a March 2007 advertisement). Ross Dress for Less took over this building shortly after in 2008, carving up this former Xtrabertsons into a Ross and dd's Discounts combo store (in the weirdest way they possibly could have too - more on that in a little bit).
Ross added the new sign panels to the building's facade during their remodel, but otherwise, the building's facade is exactly the same as it looked when Xtra was here. I've never seen a picture of this store while it was an Albertsons, but it appears Albertsons didn't change much except put their sign on the facade, and install a Grocery Palace-esque style entryway to the building.
Xtra's facade design was fairly industrial in terms of styling, a small overhang of unfinished block without too much fancy detail. That aesthetic fit with the warehouse concept Xtra was going for in its stores, although inside, Xtra did incorporate some neon into the mix as far as decor (in true late 1980's style). Even though Xtra was a warehouse store, at least they were still able to make the interior of the store look a little interesting! (And you can view the entirety of that Xtra Grand Opening ad with more interior photos here in my new Albertsons Florida Blog 2 flickr account - more on that at the end of this post).
Approaching the entrance, Ross installed all new doors, replacing the sliding doors Albertsons would have had here. Those windows in the distance have a Grocery Palace-era look to them, although I don't know if Albertsons had a typical Grocery Palace entryway here (the two sets of doors may have been closer together as I look this scene over, positioned where Ross's doors are today, with the window stretching a bit beyond the doors). Never having seen a picture of this store as an Albertsons doesn't help, and the fact this store was a strange conversion of a piece of an existing building means there were lots of opportunities for things to fall out of the norm here in terms of design.
And as far as things out of the norm in terms of design are concerned, I need to explain the funky subdivision Ross did to this place upon moving in. Ross has taken over many former Albertsons stores where the building was split in half, and dd's was placed in the remaining space that Ross didn't need - usually a very straightforward subdivision with the two right next to each other. However, because nothing about this former Albertsons store makes any sense, here's a diagram of how Ross and dd's were carved out of this old Albertsons, courtesy of the landlord's online listing (as this really needed to be visualized from a plan perspective to be understood, and feel free to click on the photo and zoom in too for a closer look):
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| Photo courtesy of loopnet.com |
Going through those doors we just saw, you enter into a mall-like lobby space. Ross has its entrance straight ahead, with dd's entrance being to the left, both set-up with entries just like you'd see if both were a junior anchor to a mall. Due to the odd configuration, both stores are oriented horizontally, with Ross positioned behind dd's. With how consistent Ross and dd's typically are with their floorplans and store design, this seemed like a strange way to go about subdividing this space, as there didn't seem to be much in the way to prevent Ross from splitting the building right down the middle like they normally would. Looking at the map above, it appears this arrangement may have had something to do with both Ross and dd's sharing the same loading dock in the back, however, I feel like there are less complicated ways to have subdivided this building even if Ross's main goal was to have a single loading area for both stores. At least with the weird configuration, we'll get to see a Ross and dd's that are just a bit unorthodox compared to the traditional cookie-cutter Ross and dd's stores that pop up on this blog from time to time. With that explanation out of the way, let's head inside and see what that map translates to in reality:
Stepping through the front doors, here's the lobby area I mentioned. The lobby area really feels like a scene from a semi-dead small-town mall than a busy suburban shopping center in Miami. The lobby was complete with benches too, and an Amazon locker (which seems to be a staple of Ross stores these days). Ross's entrance was straight ahead, with dd's to my left (although I never got a picture of dd's "mall" entrance from the lobby, but thankfully Google comes through for me!). Since we're looking toward Ross (and because dd's wasn't open for the day yet - there was apparently a half-hour difference in the two store's opening times), let's go in there and take a look around:
Stepping inside Ross you were greeted by the check lanes, followed by women's shoes, which were located in a small alcove near the entrance. Beyond women's shoes the salesfloor opened up and turned to the left, where the traditional Ross store began to greet us:
Besides the odd placement of the check lanes and women's shoes, the remainder of the store's salesfloor looked like the run-of-the-mill Ross store (even if it was rotated 90 degrees from how you'd think the building would be oriented). The photo above was taken looking down the actionway that runs along the back wall of the building, towards women's clothes and accessories.
Housewares were located toward the back of Ross's salesfloor, which is officially the left side of the building. Since this Albertsons store was a bit odd, I don't know if it had a traditional Grocery Palace layout or not. If this store was a traditional layout, it appears that it would have had its grand aisle on the right side of the building (by Ross's entrance), with us looking toward dairy and frozen foods from where I was standing to take the image above.
More housewares in the back of the store, with a narrow corridor behind that wall to allow dd's employees to access the receiving area.
Looking across the salesfloor, we're looking across the width of the building in the photo above. From this spot, the Ross store doesn't look too different from one of its traditionally-built counterparts.
Men's clothing is located along the wall that divides Ross from dd's, with the check lanes off in the distance where the wall turns to the right.
Albertsons' grocery aisles would have run in the orientation we see here, with us looking toward the actual back side of the building, which is now the width of Ross's salesfloor.
Did you see the news article recently about the Ross employee who got fired for constantly reorganizing all the dresses in the store? Management said they had no choice but to make that decision, as that employee had a hanger management problem.
Additionally, management at that store was quite upset about having to put all the dresses back in order, now that they were all out of sequins.
However, we'll have to discuss the new research study I saw linking low-rise pants to a newly discovered recessive jean another day!
You guys must hate when I run out of things to say about a store! Anyway, that was all I had from inside of Ross, with those last few photos being some random ones I took as I made my way from mens clothing back out into the lobby. With Ross covered, let's jump right into dd's:
dd's occupies the front portion of Albertsons old salesfloor, and much like Ross on the other side of the wall, there isn't much left to see from Albertsons in here. The above photo was taken from the middle of dd's looking toward the lobby entrance, which is off in the back right of the photo.
Much like Ross, dd's floorplan is also rotated 90 degrees, with the "back" of dd's also being the left side wall, much like it was inside Ross.
With the way the subdivision was done, dd's is actually a bit smaller than Ross due to the lobby area, which makes dd's shorter width-wise than Ross. I don't know if dd's stores are typically a bit smaller than the average Ross when the normal floorplans are involved, but since both stores use such a similar floorplan, it's hard to tell.
Our final photo from inside of dd's looks from the mens' clothing department toward the front end, with the lobby just beyond that through the large picture windows.
Now that we've explored the funky Ross and dd's space, the last thing we've yet to see is the old Albertsons liquor store. The old liquor store is located just to the right of the combined Ross/dd's, its entrance actually abutting what used to be Albertsons' main entrance.
#4455's liquor store was built new by Albertsons, part of the small infill of smaller storefronts Albertsons built to fill the gap where they demolished part of the former Xtra building. As you can probably tell by the for lease sign and all those old flyers taped to the windows, the liquor store has been empty for a while...
…empty since Albertsons closed in 2007, to be exact. Like so many times in the past, even though the main store has been re-tenanted and remodeled with barely a trace of Albertsons left behind, the old liquor store stands as a time capsule into tenants past. Sitting empty since 2007, this is yet another example of a former Albertsons liquor store that's had no luck finding a new tenant.
With how little documentation there is about #4455 out there, it's nice to see a little hard proof of Albertsons time in this building! The liquor store still contains a number of remnants from the Grocery Palace liquor decor, although I wish I could have found more about what the main store looked like when it was open.
Even though the Ross/dd's wasn't big on clues to the past, at least we got a nice little glimpse of Albertsons remnants through the liquor store windows. Now that we've seen everything down here, let's fly up high for some satellite imagery, starting off with some Bird's Eye aerial images courtesy of Bing Maps:
Front
Right Side
Right Side
Left Side
And now the historic aerial images, courtesy of Google Earth and historicaerials.com:
Former Albertsons #4455 - 2023
Former Albertsons #4455 - 2011
Former Albertsons #4455 - 2007 - This image was captured in November 2007, showing the Albertsons already closed, meaning the store closed sometime between March and November of that year.
Albertsons #4455 - 2006
Albertsons #4455 - 2003 - Maybe these images were taken at odd times of the day, but from what I've seen, this never looked like the most hopping Albertsons store to have existed.
Future Albertsons #4455 - 1999 - The Xtra building fully in-tact still. The Xtra would have most likely looked similar to this in its full form.
Xtra Super Food Center #502 - 1994 - Unlike Albertsons, Xtra seemed to have a bit of a following here!
Future Xtra Super Food Center - 1986 - Preparations for pouring the foundations of the shopping center beginning here.
Future Xtra Super Food Center #502 - 1984 - Nothing here yet.
I wish I knew more about what this store looked like during its Albertsons days, but otherwise, the story of Albertsons #4455 was one of the more unusual ones in Florida (complete with one of the strangest retail subdivisions I've even seen). Even though this store outlived its Miami-area counterparts by 6 years due to a geographic quirk, I still think this store was another victim of how Albertsons couldn't figure out Miami. Miami is a tough place to be a grocery store, and with Albertsons' poor track record of wooing Hispanic shoppers (both in Florida and elsewhere), Miami wasn't going to be an easy win for Albertsons with Publix, Winn-Dixie, and the numerous Hispanic chains that thrived in this area in the late 1990's and early 2000's. With how fast Albertsons crashed and burned in Miami, this city left us some other unusual Albertsons remnants, and we'll check out more of those another time. For now, be sure to come back in two weeks for more of our Floridian retail adventures!
So until the next post,
The Albertsons Florida Blogger
P.S. - If you're on flickr, be sure to follow the new Albertsons Florida Blog 2 flickr account! Unlike my original account, I won't be posting regularly on the new account - it will be more for sporadic updates and random photos I want to share about stores that may not need a full AFB or MFR post. However, my primary interactions with everyone will still be through the original AFB on flickr account, so if you need to contact or interact with me through flickr, keep doing that through my original account.
