Safeway's First Island Excursion, The Galveston H-E-B Pantry - Galveston

Last seen alive in August 2008
Safeway #????
6013 Stewart Road
Galveston, TX
Open: 1979?
Closed: 1987
Currently: Odyssey Academy

For all you Safeway fans out there, this one's kind of an interesting story because it's one of those rare cases where Safeway wins a part of Houston. This one was opened in the 1970s (local county appraisal district says built 1970, but ""effectively" 1979, so that would seem the date, given a 1974 aerial is still vacant) as a Safeway, the only one on the island, and for seven years (at the very least) it served Galveston Island as part of the Houston until Safeway Inc. started to run into trouble, getting the axe in 1987 as part of a round of closings that would serve as a predecessor to spinning the whole division a few years later (hence, this never became an AppleTree).

Luckily for Galveston, it did become a grocery store again, reopening as an H-E-B Pantry in 1990, as part of the new H-E-B Pantry concept introduced in 1988. The Pantry stores lacked much of the things that real H-E-B stores had, or even grocery stores of the day. The prototype had "only four departments: grocery, meat, produce, and health and beauty", so things like a deli and bakery, and even a pharmacy, were out of the question.

And so for the next 15 years, the Pantry remained. It brought a smile to my face every time we were in Galveston, because of the familiarity of the H-E-B Pantry, and even moreso (post-2002, such as 2005) after the old local H-E-B Pantry stores closed as they were replaced with full-line stores. It was still operating in 2008 (hence, the picture). But something happened in September 2008: Hurricane Ike. It flooded the store, ruining all the inventory, and H-E-B took the opportunity that a few other retail stores did by taking the insurance money and not reopening (the Dillard's at the Mall of the Mainland as well as the Macy's in Northwest Mall did the same thing). The long-rumored plans to open a full-line H-E-B on the island disappeared, leaving residents with only Randalls and Kroger to shop at.

And here's the ironic thing: Randalls, which was on the island as part of the independent chain's reach across Houston and later purchased by Safeway, was one of the first grocery retailers to reopen. As for this store, H-E-B sold the store to a charter school, which renovated it significantly, even on the outside.

Here are some aerials taken over the years. There's a smaller building adjacent to the Safeway, which I would wager was a drug store, probably an Eckerd. This is what likely sustained the strip after Safeway left (in 2007, this space was vacant and wasn't refilled until Odyssey came in).

Over the years:

1974

1982

1990: First Year of the Pantry

1995

2004. Last time the gas station shows up.

January 2008

September 2008, city evacuated

2010, newly paved parking lot

2012, front part removed

The title refers to Safeway's first excursion to Galveston Island, before anyone tries to point out that Safeway had Hawaii stores in the first part of the 20th century.