900 Texas Loop 340 • Waco, TX
This one is kind of weird--many, many years ago, a much younger Pseudo3D was in the north part of Waco around the early 2000s (no later than 2002, but no earlier than 1999) with his mother and his grandfather. The reason has long been forgotten--it was either looking for furniture or house-hunting (probably the latter), but the point is, he was there.
During that time, the boy noticed an odd-looking church called The Church of the Open Door. He knew immediately that it was an old grocery store, after all, an old Winn-Dixie in his town became a Lacks Furniture, but he wasn't sure if it was a Winn-Dixie or not (he should have noticed that there actually was a Winn-Dixie less than a mile away, but we'll forgive him). Years passed, and the church remained, but Pseudo3D never really figured out what the Church took over.
The answer he found was well over a decade later and stumbled upon in an article--it was an old Albertsons, and a very-short lived one at that.
Existing from 1994 to 1997, it was one of the early failures of Albertsons (and a symbol of what was yet to come), even though the late 1990s seemed rather rosy for the rest of the company. By 1998, it had not yet acquired American Stores, which would put many stores into the company's pocket but ultimately spell disaster that it would not fully recover for another 15 years, and would still have stores in nearly every market in Texas.
Waco continued to have an Albertsons, operating a few miles away closer to the center of town, until it was closed in 2006 shortly after the LLC purchase. Because the existence of Albertsons predates the Internet, it's been exceedingly difficult to find a store number for this one.
Albertsons would have a mountain of debt to deal with in the coming years.
ReplyDeleteWell... I used to live around the corner from there and didn't know it was a former Albertson's. The Winn Dixie is actually now an Atwoods, with the movie theater next door being demolished.
ReplyDeleteAnd there was another Albertsons in Waco at 1900 N. Valley Mills Drive, which is where Harmony Science Academy is today. You can still kind of make out the labelscar if you look hard enough.
I actually moved out of the neighborhood a year ago and moved to Ohio and was always wondering what the church was.
Technically, this store was in Bellmead not Waco. It had everything going for it: great location, easy access, new and modern. But as luck would have it...Walmart built their first Super Walmart directly across the street from Albertsons. Walmart now sold groceries of course and suddenly over-night, most everyone stopped going to Albertsons. I remember the store manager who gave me his business card and wrote "ok on checks' on the back so I wouldn't have to wait as long to check-out. That was in 1994 and I still have his business card for some unexplained reason. His name was Craig Lee, asst. mgr. was Jacque Jordan. It's good that it was re-purposed as a church otherwise I think it would have sat empty for 20 plus years.
ReplyDeleteI heard the movie theater demolished next to the former Safeway/AppleTree/Winn-Dixie/Atwoods was the original Safeway.
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