Pavilions - Pasadena, CA

[CalItalian]

Pavilions Place came into existence with Vons purchase of Safeway in the 80's. They rebranded the smaller Safeway (and Pantry) stores in affluent areas to Pavilions Place since they could not fit all of the amenities the large Pavilions carried. They were basically a small format Pavilions with a limited assortment, limited amenities and a different layout.

Pavilions Place stores that come to mind:

West Hollywood
Sherman Oaks
Beverly Hills
Torrance
Pasadena
South Pasadena
Hollywood
Santa Monica

There might be more but those are the ones I can remember right now.

Torrance


Pasadena

Thanks for this and good to see you hear and Groceteria! Your knowledge of Safeway, et al is greatly appreciated.

I do not remember the one in West Hollywood as a "Place". Do you have an address or foto? It can't be the current Pavilions, is it?

Pavilions Place in West Hollywood was where the current redeveloped Pavilions is. It was previously a Safeway.

[veteran+]

Somehow I missed that change. What year was that?

The Safeway there was a good size (I shopped there quite often). Well run store for sure and extremely busy. It is curious that they changed it to Pavilions Place, since it is was not a small store.

[ClownLoach]

Somehow I missed that change. What year was that?

The Safeway there was a good size (I shopped there quite often). Well run store for sure and extremely busy. It is curious that they changed it to Pavilions Place, since it is was not a small store.

If I recall correctly, Pavilions started out at 80,000 Sq ft in Garden Grove. They wanted huge sites like that. Smaller were branded with Place. They must have figured out over time that 80,000 Sq ft was not going to be easy to find sites for and would not deliver a return on investment, so they gradually started shrinking the concept and at some point the "Place" was removed.

[steps]

Pavilions Place came into existence with Vons purchase of Safeway in the 80's. They rebranded the smaller Safeway (and Pantry) stores in affluent areas to Pavilions Place since they could not fit all of the amenities the large Pavilions carried. They were basically a small format Pavilions with a limited assortment, limited amenities and a different layout.

Pavilions Place stores that come to mind:

West Hollywood
Sherman Oaks
Beverly Hills
Torrance
Pasadena
South Pasadena
Hollywood
Santa Monica

There might be more but those are the ones I can remember right now.

Torrance


Pasadena

Thanks for this and good to see you hear and Groceteria! Your knowledge of Safeway, et al is greatly appreciated.

I do not remember the one in West Hollywood as a "Place". Do you have an address or foto? It can't be the current Pavilions, is it?

Thank you for the welcome back veteran

West Hollywood was one of the first stores to get the "place" name. When it was converted from Safeway, it was actually a downgrade. They took a lot of the amenties away Safeway had with the conversion. The NIMBYs even started a group called PPP (People against Pavilions Place). Vons then converted it and put as many amenties as they could and rebranded it a regular Pavilions.

The old building before the the complete tear down and rebuild was a Pavilions Places in all but name (using your debit card, the charge would show up as Pavilions Place #2230). This store was never a true Pavilions format because of it's size, it kept the original Safeway layout for the most part. This was a gable Safeway and was expanded by Safeway in the late 70's-early 80's. Picture #5 you can see the old gable roof.

I have a picture of it as Pavilions below but not as a Pavilions Place. The "Pavilions" sign is original, they removed "Place" and added the chevron.

[steps]

Somehow I missed that change. What year was that?

The Safeway there was a good size (I shopped there quite often). Well run store for sure and extremely busy. It is curious that they changed it to Pavilions Place, since it is was not a small store.

All former Safeway's that were canidates for Pavilions were converted to Pavilions Place regardless of size. The store was "small" compared to a conventional Pavilions at the time. No Pavilions locations specifically picked out, converted or built by Vons were ever Pavilions Place, they were all former Safeway's (and 1 Pantry).

The store as Pavilions was very, very cramped since they tried to add all the departments Pavilions had. West Hollywood was Vons #1 store in the entire company pulling in $1 million minimum a week.

Below is the Pasadena store as a Pantry.

[steps]

Somehow I missed that change. What year was that?

The Safeway there was a good size (I shopped there quite often). Well run store for sure and extremely busy. It is curious that they changed it to Pavilions Place, since it is was not a small store.

If I recall correctly, Pavilions started out at 80,000 Sq ft in Garden Grove. They wanted huge sites like that. Smaller were branded with Place. They must have figured out over time that 80,000 Sq ft was not going to be easy to find sites for and would not deliver a return on investment, so they gradually started shrinking the concept and at some point the "Place" was removed.

Garden Grove was around 55,000 sq ft when it opened. It was sad watching it's decline through the years which ended in a major downgrade conversion to Vons with Pavilions decor. Closed departments and a empty store. The clientle it originally catered to died off and the demographics shifted to hispanic and asian.

The stores got bigger and bigger after Garden Grove and Vons thought they could open Pavilions anywhere and it would succeed. They made several mistakes with Pavilions locations (Upland, Buena Park, Moreno Valley and more). Victorville was supposed to be a Pavilions and I believe it still has the Pavilions layout if it hasn't chaged recently. Pavilions had A LOT of labor intensive programs and got way more hours to work with than a conventional Vons. Garden Grove wasn't even a "high volume" store, it did around $400K a week.

Below is opening day at Pavilions Garden Grove.

[ClownLoach]

Somehow I missed that change. What year was that?

The Safeway there was a good size (I shopped there quite often). Well run store for sure and extremely busy. It is curious that they changed it to Pavilions Place, since it is was not a small store.

If I recall correctly, Pavilions started out at 80,000 Sq ft in Garden Grove. They wanted huge sites like that. Smaller were branded with Place. They must have figured out over time that 80,000 Sq ft was not going to be easy to find sites for and would not deliver a return on investment, so they gradually started shrinking the concept and at some point the "Place" was removed.

Garden Grove was around 55,000 sq ft when it opened. It was sad watching it's decline through the years which ended in a major downgrade conversion to Vons with Pavilions decor. Closed departments and a empty store. The clientle it originally catered to died off and the demographics shifted to hispanic and asian.

The stores got bigger and bigger after Garden Grove and Vons thought they could open Pavilions anywhere and it would succeed. They made several mistakes with Pavilions locations (Upland, Buena Park, Moreno Valley and more). Victorville was supposed to be a Pavilions and I believe it still has the Pavilions layout if it hasn't chaged recently. Pavilions had A LOT of labor intensive programs and got way more hours to work with than a conventional Vons. Garden Grove wasn't even a "high volume" store, it did around $400K a week.

Below is opening day at Pavilions Garden Grove.

I was not far off. Garden Grove was 76,000 Sq ft. I grew up shopping that store from opening day. I disagree with the statement that they kept getting bigger and bigger, except for maybe Arcadia? All of the recent downsized or rebranded stores in the news have been in the 55K to 60K range. Garden Grove was absolutely massive compared to the other early Pavilions stores like Westminster and Long Beach, with ultra wide walkways around the center of the store and the left wall with an ice cream shop, tortilla factory, a floral shop the size of a Conroys or larger, and other features. No other location ever got that level of detail. And they definitely spent a ton of labor on fancy stuff when they were going to have company, I remember being in the store when Bill Davila was there and they had made fancy sculptures with cut up vegetables in the meat cases, put together multi tier wedding cake displays, and all sorts of "dog and pony show" type stuff for his visit.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/orangecoun ... loper/amp/

Garden Grove was always diverse, and the population just kept increasing year over year bringing in more potential customers to the area. The residential neighborhood directly to the south of the store is arguably the nicest in the city with many massive "Ranch" style homes on very large lots. There was always a base for the store albeit a small one which aligns with your figures of $400K per week although that isn't small change when adjusted for inflation.

The main issues were the lack of retail stores in surrounding areas in general were bringing a lot of traffic to the area of that Pavilions thereby bumping up traffic to all retailers there. Across the street from Pavilions was one of the first "malls" in Orange County although it was not enclosed. That site was incredibly busy and a huge draw to the area which made this intersection a prime location for a new concept intended to pull from a larger region.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/orangecoun ... alled/amp/

The shortage of nearby stores addressed itself in the late 80s and 90s as additional shopping centers were built out in surrounding communities. Costco also opened one of its first California stores to tremendous success across the street about the same time Pavilions opened. After merging with Price Club about 5 years later they eventually moved across town taking a lot of traffic with it. The entire Brookhurst/Chapman intersection died in the 90s after Costco left and other big boxes also departed across the street such as PetSmart and all the mall type stores along with JCPenney. In the late 2000s after the Pavilions was dead along with pretty much everything else across the street, the closed Costco reopened as a Walmart and the shopping center with a old JCPenney was rebuilt as a movie theater which revitalized the area.

Also, the parking situation at Pavilions was bad with the weird lot in the back which lost an important access road in the early 90s eliminating an "Express entrance" from Brookhurst which was intended to help the rest of the dying center with Newberry, SavOn and others. The removal of that road backfired and was the real death blow to the Pavilions. It never recovered from the loss of the express entrance which was on the old Pacific Electric right of way. My understanding was that in earlier redevelopment proposals Vons was going to try to redo the store and "reverse" it with the entrance moving to face traffic on the Chapman side but the city would not approve it without other costly changes as there were not enough spaces on that side for the square footage. Eventually it closed and was demolished recently for a new center.

Today the site is a new Sprouts properly situated to face traffic on Chapman that seems to be doing much better than many other recent new locations I've seen. Seems to be a big hit for Garden Grove and the surrounding neighborhood. Clearly it was not a demographic issue as the Pavilions customer then is the Sprouts customer now. The main issues were neighboring Co-tenants arriving and leaving, the terrible decision to remove the Brookhurst entrance along the back road, and the mistake made from day one to put the entrance on the back of the store.

[veteran+]

Somehow I missed that change. What year was that?

The Safeway there was a good size (I shopped there quite often). Well run store for sure and extremely busy. It is curious that they changed it to Pavilions Place, since it is was not a small store.

All former Safeway's that were canidates for Pavilions were converted to Pavilions Place regardless of size. The store was "small" compared to a conventional Pavilions at the time. No Pavilions locations specifically picked out, converted or built by Vons were ever Pavilions Place, they were all former Safeway's (and 1 Pantry).

The store as Pavilions was very, very cramped since they tried to add all the departments Pavilions had. West Hollywood was Vons #1 store in the entire company pulling in $1 million minimum a week.

Below is the Pasadena store as a Pantry.

It's all coming back to me now...........................THANKS!

BTW, I'm sure you know, I'm told it's the number ONE store in sales, STILL?

[J-Man]

And they definitely spent a ton of labor on fancy stuff when they were going to have company, I remember being in the store when Bob Davila was ther

BILL Davila. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Davila

[Bluelightspecial]

Somehow I missed that change. What year was that?

The Safeway there was a good size (I shopped there quite often). Well run store for sure and extremely busy. It is curious that they changed it to Pavilions Place, since it is was not a small store.

It wasn't. Not all the Safeway's that were converted to Pavilions were Pavilions Places. The larger ones like Melrose & Vine, South Pasadena and West Hollywood were not. West Hollywood was the highest volume store after Vons bought the division. Santa Monica on 7th is also a small store like Pasadena but it is high volume. Safeway did cheap remodels, but when they expanded the West Hollywood store in the 80's it became the highest volume store in outside Northern CA. When they demo'd the old "Safeway/Pavilions" you could see the location of where the old Safeway logos were