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Re: Safeway San Mateo remodel (non lifestyle)

Posted: January 2nd, 2019, 5:17 pm
by klkla
reymann wrote: January 2nd, 2019, 10:53 am if the fresno stores get rebannered, it would more likely be rebannered to safeway to cut down on ad costs and the fresno stores have essentialy become safeway for the most part with the ads being in the norcal circular.
Why would they rebanner the Vons stores to a brand that doesn't operate in Fresno now?

Re: Safeway San Mateo remodel (non lifestyle)

Posted: January 3rd, 2019, 9:10 am
by reymann
safeway used to be in the fresno area until the 90s and there still is the lone pak n'save in madera. fresno has a lot of bay area transplants, so people in the fresno area would hardly notice a rebanner to safeway in the fresno area.

Re: Safeway San Mateo remodel (non lifestyle)

Posted: June 30th, 2019, 5:33 am
by Alpha8472
In the mid 90s, Safeway traded several of their stores in the Fresno area to Save Mart. This led to Safeway disappearing from that area.

Re: Safeway San Mateo remodel (non lifestyle)

Posted: June 30th, 2019, 10:22 am
by storewanderer
Alpha8472 wrote: June 30th, 2019, 5:33 am In the mid 90s, Safeway traded several of their stores in the Fresno area to Save Mart. This led to Safeway disappearing from that area.
Of those Fresno stores traded to Save Mart, the former Pak N Save on Blackstone is still open as Food Maxx. One of the Safeways (Fruit St.) closed a few years ago and the Safeway on West was actually replaced with a larger store by Save Mart 15 years ago next to the old store. So it seems that worked out reasonably well.

In return for that Safeway got the Save Mart Stores in Vallejo... not sure what came of those. I think Safeway may still operate one of them.

Re: Safeway San Mateo remodel (non lifestyle)

Posted: June 30th, 2019, 11:52 am
by Alpha8472
Safeway got the Pleasant Hill Save Mart. It was one of the busiest supermarkets in the entire county. It originally began as Fry's in the 1970s. It had a pharmacy, which Safeway was not used to at the time.

That supermarket was one of the first to get the Lifestyle decor and has never been remodeled since.

That store is historic as it put an old 1960s Albertsons Payless combo store across the street out of business. People in this area hated Albertsons and when Fry's (a local family chain) arrived the Fry's store was a shopping destination.

Then in 2000, Albertsons opened a huge new store across the street from the Safeway and tried to battle this store again after failing over 20 years later. For a while Albertsons was a ghost town and I thought it would close. Then it was bought by Save Mart and became a Lucky and once again Albertsons left the city. The local people rejoiced and the Lucky became one of the nicest and busiest Lucky stores in the Bay Area. This city was the scene of one of biggest and longest running supermarket battles ever. One chain building a huge store only to have another huge store built across the street over and over again.

In the end, only the Safeway remains as Lucky was transformed into an Orchard Supply Hardware which recently closed. The Albertsons Payless was demolished to build a Payless which is now Rite Aid. Although, I must admit that the Albertsons Payless Combo was the most spectacular thing ever.

Re: Safeway San Mateo remodel (non lifestyle)

Posted: June 30th, 2019, 10:19 pm
by storewanderer
Was the Pleasant Hill Save Mart part of a trade or was that just one where Save Mart's lease ended and the landlord opted to go with a Safeway redevelopment instead?

Ironic that that Pleasant Hill Lucky got sacrificed to Lowe's for OSH who closed the place down so quickly. I don't understand if the lease term was short there or what exactly led to OSH getting that store. What is in that space now? Is it just empty?

At least Pleasant Hill's identical siblings in Concord and Hayward are still open.

Albertsons handling of Concord was sort of strange. I remember when they opened the new stores in Concord and Pleasant Hill in 2000, they closed down 3-4 smaller Lucky Stores around there and called those two new stores "replacement stores."

Re: Safeway San Mateo remodel (non lifestyle)

Posted: June 30th, 2019, 11:44 pm
by Alpha8472
The Pleasant Hill Save Mart was traded in exchange for several Safeway stores in the Fresno area.

Orchard Supply Hardware apparently was willing to pay more to lease the building. The OSH was a relocation from an older store in a rundown neighborhood one city away.

The building now sits abandoned. It is a shame as the Lucky store was the centerpiece of the new Downtown Pleasant Hill which was built in 2000 with Albertsons as the first store. Now the downtown's center is an ugly eyesore. No one wants to rent it.

Re: Safeway San Mateo remodel (non lifestyle)

Posted: July 3rd, 2019, 4:00 pm
by klkla
Alpha8472 wrote: June 30th, 2019, 11:52 am Safeway got the Pleasant Hill Save Mart. It was one of the busiest supermarkets in the entire county. It originally began as Fry's in the 1970s. It had a pharmacy, which Safeway was not used to at the time.
How long ago did that happen? It must have been a long time ago if Safeway was not used to operating pharmacies.

Re: Safeway San Mateo remodel (non lifestyle)

Posted: July 3rd, 2019, 5:17 pm
by Alpha8472
It was in the mid 90s. At that time, there were no Safeway pharmacies in the area. It was not until a few years later when Safeway started adding pharmacies to more of their stores.

Re: Safeway San Mateo remodel (non lifestyle)

Posted: July 3rd, 2019, 5:42 pm
by klkla
Alpha8472 wrote: July 3rd, 2019, 5:17 pm It was in the mid 90s. At that time, there were no Safeway pharmacies in the area. It was not until a few years later when Safeway started adding pharmacies to more of their stores.
FWIW 59% of Safeway's 1,368 stores had pharmacies in 1997 = 807 pharmacies. I assume you mean in the Pleasant Hill area, but as a company this should not have been a problem for them.