Retail Watchers

If I recall correcly, HomeBase liquidated in either 2000 or 2001. I only visited the one here a couple of times while it was open, and it seemed like a so-so box store home improvement chain. They seemed to do fine on their own, but as soon as Home Depot and Lowe's began to move into their territory...

http://www.kirklandviews.com/2009/04/02/costco-wholesale-corporation-announces-plans-to-close-costco-home-store-in-kirkland/ For those of you who aren't famillar with this, Costco Home is basically a Costco warehouse store stocked entirely with furniture and home decorating accessories, plus some TV...

It's not unusual to see Starbucks all over the place around here. The local (Bear Creek) Safeway here in Redmond has a Starbucks in it, and there's a Starbucks in the shopping center. In addition to that, there's another Starbucks in a small center on the other side of the street from there, and the...

As I said in the last post, this particular store was expanded at some point during the Seventies, and presumably the extra room added (which looks to have been a few thousand square feet or so) was enough to warrant the lifestyle treatment. I suspect you'd have a hard time doing much with the produ...

It's been noted that for the most part, older and smaller Safeway stores have been slow to receive the Lifestyle design package, particularly the Marinas, which seem to end up with a hodgepodge of older styles. If you're wondering what a Marina with the Lifestyle format would look like, the store on...

I had no idea Shari's was even in a position to bother expanding. In all the time I've lived around here I've never seen a new one open up. There are a few scattered here and there (all in the standard hexagonal building) and there used to be one in town here until it closed down to make way for the...

Up here, Bartell Drugs uses the shorter aisles as well. It makes the store seem more open than the tall shelves in the competitors stores do, and the aisles don't seem to be that much narrower than the ones at Rite Aid or Walgreens.

The only Virgin Megastores I've been to have all been in touristy locations (there used to be one at the Forum Shops in Vegas, and up until the closing there's one in the Downtown Disney area at Disneyworld.) Never been to one other than when I was on vacation. Then again, I don't buy CDs much anymo...

The Santa Fe Wild Oats store on that list was originally a Safeway (I'm tempted to say it was a Marina, but I can't be entirely sure of that. I know it was some sort of 60s design, and had some sort of weird looking dinosaur-themed tile mosaic near one of the entrances.) I believe that they eventual...

As far as I am aware, almost every Rite Aid store in the area here can be traced back to Pay 'n Save. The ones that are newer are generally freestanding stores built to replace older Pay 'n Save stores.