Safeway NorCal Remodels and New Stores

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rwsandiego
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Re: Safeway NorCal Remodels and New Stores

Post by rwsandiego »

storewanderer wrote: August 21st, 2022, 1:26 am...A busy grocery store underground parking garage with a lot of people coming and going seems to be pretty safe. Some I've been in that are not very busy stores and seem to have a lot of loitering, such as, the Albertsons in Downtown San Diego, may not feel overly safe...
That Albertsons is located on the far eastern edge of the "East Village" section of downtown San Diego. Although not as sketchy as it was back in 2000 when I moved to SD or 2006 when the store opened, it is a sketchy area. There would be loitering if the parking lot was at ground level in front of the store.

The VONS in Mission Hills San Diego has the parking lot under the store, but it is at ground level and the store is on the second level. The lot is very brightly lit at night and has always felt safe to me.
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Re: Safeway NorCal Remodels and New Stores

Post by storewanderer »

rwsandiego wrote: August 21st, 2022, 8:18 pm
That Albertsons is located on the far eastern edge of the "East Village" section of downtown San Diego. Although not as sketchy as it was back in 2000 when I moved to SD or 2006 when the store opened, it is a sketchy area. There would be loitering if the parking lot was at ground level in front of the store.

The VONS in Mission Hills San Diego has the parking lot under the store, but it is at ground level and the store is on the second level. The lot is very brightly lit at night and has always felt safe to me.
Agree on the Vons parking structure, that felt perfectly safe and well lit (and I was there fairly late at night). The Albertsons one felt somewhat unsafe even in the daytime, due to a general lack of customers, and just a strange feeling in general.
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Re: Safeway NorCal Remodels and New Stores

Post by norcalriteaidclerk »

Fair oaks Dewey which for several years was my walking distance store was recently remodeled out of a later lifestyle package (still had it as late as July of last year)into Florida/modern.It seems that albertsafeway may be finally getting serious about phasing out lifestyle given that it isn't just stores with the early version getting remodeled.

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Re: Safeway NorCal Remodels and New Stores

Post by Alpha8472 »

Strangely enough, some San Francisco Bay Area stores still have not been remodeled. These stores are very close to the old Safeway headquarters and many of them still have Lifestyle with ugly bright LED lights added.

The remodeling schedule is totally unpredictable. The former Flagship Safeway only recently remodeled not too long ago. The new Flagship was only remodeled just months ago into the Pavilions Decor.

The Florida decor is a failure at the former Flagship as the floor is still the old Lifestyle floor and heavily damaged.
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Re: Safeway NorCal Remodels and New Stores

Post by storewanderer »

That Florida/Modern decor is very interesting. They dumb down the store to the point where the "nice" elements from Lifestyle are gone.

I was in a Safeway in SE Colorado Springs recently. This was a late Safeway, opened with the pre-Lifestyle interior. It never got the Lifestyle interior. Now it has the Florida/Modern interior. It kept the old white floor/large beige tiles at perimeter departments. I was in another Safeway in Monument, CO (identical store to above), that is one of their better stores in CO and it did receive a Lifestyle remodel and now has Florida/Modern (with a cement floor). The two stores, at this point, aside from the different floor and the different tiles behind perimeter, look and feel identical. Albertsons has successfully de-Lifestyled these stores, I will give them that. The stores basically feel somewhat cheap, boring, and plain- basically exactly how Safeways felt back in the late 90's and the environment that made the company call for Lifestyle in the first place. What goes around, comes around, I guess. Lifestyle was drab and depressing and needed to go, but it would have been nice if they could have tried to integrate some of the Lifestyle elements that were actually nice/upscale, into the remodels.
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