Bel Air renovation Arden Sacramento

[ninersdd]

The Bel Air right down the street from me is getting a renovation. This has seemingly been expected for a few years now, and its finally coming to fruition. I've been going there my entire life and it hasn't really been touched that much as far as I can remember(20+ years). I wonder what sort of decor it will get when it is a said and done. I talked to a long time employee today and it starts 2/6.

[Alpha8472]

Perhaps the remodeling is in response to Safeway remodeling their local stores for the first time since the Lifestyle decor came out in 2004.

[storewanderer]

Raleys hasn't done many major remodels in the past 10 years but what they have done a lot of are store resets, notably breaking out their nutrition department and scattering it throughout the aisles, and also significantly downsizing the drug department of the larger Raleys Stores.

The other interesting thing I've seen Raleys do in a couple of stores that were remodeled 10 years ago and got cement floors, where the floors looked really bad, is to go in there and install gray Pergo-type flooring instead of the cement. There are some other remodels they have done where the cement floors looked good/smooth, that kept their cement floors.

Raleys has some run down stores that need serious attention like Reno Keystone, Reno South McCarran, Yerington, and Sak N Save, but generally speaking I find their store maintenance and upkeep overall to be far better than other chains. And if they do work to a store that does not come out well, they are not afraid to go in and fix it (like the flooring issue I described above).

Another example- for a while Raleys was putting customer unload checkstands into the remodels. This happened in a few remodels in NV: Elko, Incline Village, and Gardnerville. A few CA ones too like Ukiah. There was a real stink raised about this in Gardnerville (lots of retirees there); it did not take long for them to go in there and bring back the cashier unload checkstands. Since then Raleys reverted back to cashier unload checkstands in all new stores/remodels.

[ninersdd]

This Bel Air is the only one in the chain to have a Postal Service window, but that will be gone thanks to the renovation. It will have an expanded Peets/outdoor patio and a conference room for rental.

County link:https://planningdocuments.saccounty.net ... munityID=1

[Alpha8472]

I saw Postal windows at several Raley's owned stores in the San Francisco Bay Area a few years ago. Have they been removed? Antioch had one.

[storewanderer]

I saw Postal windows at several Raley's owned stores in the San Francisco Bay Area a few years ago. Have they been removed? Antioch had one.

They had some of these in Reno and took them away many years ago. They entirely exited the "convenience center" with bill pay, money transfer, etc. services. When they bought Scolaris, they picked up stores that had heavy volumes of bill pay/money order and at least one post office contract unit and all of those "services" were discontinued in the stores about 2 weeks before Scolaris transferred the ownership to Raleys. Raleys then installed "bill pay in a box" machines in some of the stores where people got real vocal about the service centers being closed. That just added salt to the wound in places like Yerington and Fernley. In the Sak N Save unit Raleys brought in a kiosk occupied by a tenant to do money transfers about six months after taking the store over; that was a store that all day had customers lined up for the money transfer/bill pay counter typically warranting 2-3 clerks, and the little contract postal unit also stayed busy enough to justify having a clerk dedicated to it.

[HCal]

I'm starting to wonder if it was Raley's or the USPS that pulled out of the deal. I know that in-store traffic was down due to the pandemic at that time, but there has to be more to it. Maybe USPS unions were pushing against outsourcing?

[J-Man]

My parents moved to that area in 1977, just about the same time that the Raley's on Fair Oaks and Walnut opened. Even though they lived within walking distance of Raley's, my mother always shopped at Bel-Air (this was before the Raley's acquisition) and used that post office service a lot. She also cashed checks there frequently. But later on (they lived there until 2014--probably post-acquisition), she shopped more frequently at Raley's, which was definitely a newer, more modern store.

[norcalriteaidclerk]

I visited that store this past spring(had to use on of SacRT's 'SmaRT Ride' on-demand dial-a-ride shuttles to get there and back home since that area only has fixed buses during rush hours).It clearly hasn't been remodeled since before the merger with Raley's(the pre-merger 'the stores that care' slogan is present above the checkstands).The former pharmacy area had been converted to an HBA department when I was there(the pharmacy was among 27 low-performers that Raley's closed before Thanksgiving 2019 close to the time a global pandemic was claiming its initial cases,I believe Walgreens across the street bought the files).Though there were self-checkouts it looked like it was overdue for some serious capex then as it felt like it hadn't been touched since opening in the 60's or 70's.

[ninersdd]

It reopened on August 19. Definitely looks better since it was overdue for a change. Interestingly enough, they actually decided to keep the post office counter from before. They also have a wine/beer bar near the cafe/bakery.