This post was originally seen on "Brazos Buildings & Businesses" in its original form.
Randalls #??
Albertsons #2758
Address: 615 University Drive East
College Station, TX
Opened (as Randalls): 1991
Closed (as Randalls) / Opened (as Albertsons): 1997 (Albertsons reopened the store in November 1997)
Closed (as Albertsons): 2011
What's There Now: vacant
I figure that this is a good one to start with since it concerns both Randalls (bought by Safeway in '99) and Albertsons (announced it would buy Safeway in '14). It's also fitting since it was one of the first posts on Brazos Buildings & Businesses, though at the time, it didn't have the pictures it does now and was still open.
The story of this building goes back to the early 1990s, when Randall's, the upscale-leaning grocery chain from Houston opened a new "New Generation" store in College Station fairly close to the Texas A&M University campus. With construction underway by March 1991, and opening in fall of 1991 (see comments on the original post), it was the largest grocery store in the county (not like there was much competition) and definitely the largest one in College Station. It had, according to this article featured "a coffee department with a bar and stools, fresh-made juices, pizza from scratch, a full-line floral department, a full-service bank and a one-hour photo shop."
The store was absolutely huge. It's listed on the H-E-B sublease page (see below in regards to that) at 80,478 square feet, which is still considered a rather large supermarket and was certainly large by Albertsons standards.
In the mid-1990s, with the purchase of the Cullum Companies of Dallas (acquiring Tom Thumb), Randalls (now without an apostrophe) added wine and beer to its line-up for the first time. Unfortunately, that was its undoing, with that and acquiring the former AppleTree stores in the Austin/Temple-Killeen area, the debt occurred necessitated some store closures, of which the College Station store (which was a victim of that) was sold off along with two other stores in Round Rock and Pasadena (both are now closed, of course). It wasn't stated how (un)successful the store was, but Albertsons bought it and reopened it sometime in late 1997 (the College Avenue Albertsons closed in late December of that year) with new décor. From what I've heard, the employees weren't able to keep their jobs, unfortunately.
Albertsons wasn't so unlucky as fellow stores in the Houston division (which all closed in 2002), in fact, 2002 brought a third Albertsons in the area and a renovation of another, but the breakup of Albertsons Inc. and subsequent trimming down by Albertsons LLC ultimately took its toll.
By 2011, there were only three stores left south of the D/FW market: this one, Kerrville, and New Braunfels.
So when I heard that H-E-B had bought all the Albertsons sites and would shutter them, I had to check it out. I wasn't happy with this arrangement, as all the employees were forced out of a job not because it had succumbed to the position (although it likely would've died soon enough, given how bleak the scenario at Albertsons LLC looked at the time), but a rival grocery store bought them out not to build another store (or even convert it to another concept) but to stop potential competition (or putting another grocery store there). This actually wasn't the case, H-E-B only wanted the Kerrville location but had to take all three as a package deal.
By the time I got to this Albertsons, it lost the Pharmacy, that’s way the "Sav-On" and "Pharmacy" removed. It should also be noted that the Sav-On was added sometime in the mid-2000s, but it's not like the store was an "Albertsons Sav-On" (unlike the Kroger Sav-On stores, which were different Sav-Ons entirely).
There's two shots of the "Beverage Boulevard" sign, and ironically, is still hanging in the closed store.
According to the comments on the original post (see Brazos Buildings & Businesses), Early Bird Cleaners was there from day one, and was connected to the store from the inside. I'm not sure when it closed, but a spring 2013 visit had the space cleared out and the empty store visible from the outside...complete with many pieces of décor still intact, like that Beverage Boulevard sign. In looking back at the pictures, the Early Bird Cleaners seems to have gone dark.
After the closure of the store, the street signage was used as advertising for "BedZGalore.com", which itself flaked and eventually fell apart. A nearby tutoring place in a strip center gets really crowded on some nights, taking up a good half of the parking (which is great for them since all the other tenants had up and died).
The décor package, as you can see, is the "Theme Park" package seen on Albertsons brands at this time, which wasn't around when the store reopening, possibly redecorating at some point in the 2000s. I don't know what décor package it opened with originally.
All of these pictures were taken by me unless noted. I do have a couple more of the "post-closure" pictures, but I found this one to be the most interesting.
So, why is this store still vacant? While the H-E-B in Kerrville was reopened under their name, and the New Braunfels location was eventually sold back to the city so they could convert into a new city hall, the Albertsons in College Station is rather murkier. You see, while the other two were owned by Albertsons, the College Station location was not. Even as far back on tax records in 2002, UIRT Investors owned the building, then went to EF Holdings in 2003. The deed currently is owned by Hassan Kazerouni, who got it from 615 EUD LLC, and 615 EUD LLC was transferred from Ridgemont Investment Group LLC the same day Ridgemont got it from E F Holdings Inc. in 2012, meaning that 615 EUD LLC was probably a shell of that company and not H-E-B as I had expected.
Tax records do not show ownership before that, which means there are three options.
a) The store was not owned by Randalls but rather leased long-term. Given that by the early 1990s, the "40-99" year lease trend was out of date, so the likely scenario is 25 years, since the lease didn't expire after 20 (2011). This could mean the store could be out of lease by the end of 2016, meaning finally some action.
b) Randalls did not sell the stores to Albertsons in 1997 but rather had them rent long-term. This means that if it was a 20 year lease, we'd see action in 2018, maybe longer.
Its currently listed as a "sublease" on their real estate website, and they won't let any food or drug store occupy it.
Now that we've got that depressing part over with, here's an awesome YouTube video of a Randall's opening in 1992 in Lufkin. While not in College Station, it gives a feel for what it was like, as the décor was probably identical and so on.
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