Former Albertsons #2701 - College Station, TX

January 2011. The Albertsons had been closed for about 13 years by this point.301 S. College Avenue • College Station, TXI originally covered this subject back in 2011 on my other blog, Brazos Buildings & Businesses. This store is a little bit weird. It was #2701, the "first" in the Houston division...though it actually opened in 1992 as an Albertsons after #2702 opened in 1991. It was also #2797. And yet, it was not. Read on.

For those that don't know, this began as a store called "Skaggs Albertsons". One of the more interesting partnerships in supermarket history, Skaggs Drug Centers ran a highly successful group of drug stores. It was only natural that they would team up with a respected (but regional) name to create a chain of large food and drug combos when such a thing was more of a novelty than something expected, and Skaggs Albertsons was born.

Courtesy John Ellisor

The store opened in July 1971 and remained through the years with minimal exterior changes except in the front facade (the side entrance would remain the same, though it was eventually sealed). In the late 1970s, Skaggs and Albertsons split ways, and while Albertsons would rebrand their stores in other markets (San Antonio, Florida, and a few others), Skaggs would keep theirs. A few stores briefly got rebranded to Skaggs SuperCenters, but this store was spared and in November 1979, a full page advertisement in the paper announced that the store would be changing to Skaggs-Alpha Beta, facilitated by buying the Alpha Beta name with purchasing the American Stores grocery chain that same year (it would also change the corporate name to American Stores).

The new "American Stores" company continued to manage this store until it rebranded it as Jewel-Osco in 1991 (giving it a minor renovation in the process). Shortly after, American Stores sold the remaining Jewel-Osco stores in Florida (these were new-builds), Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma to Albertsons, as well as a dry goods distribution center in Oklahoma.

It was soon closed and reopened as an Albertsons, giving it another remodel, the "Blue & Gray Market" as Albertsons Florida Blog calls it. I don't know what the original store number under Albertsons was, as it was opened after 2702 and renumbered as part of the Houston division later in the 1990s.

And so from about 1992 to 1997, Albertsons managed a store on the corner of College and University. However, Randalls, an upscale supermarket further down University, sold its store to Albertsons, causing the small supermarket to quickly be abandoned (it closed in November 1997, according to sources I've heard), and it continued stand for nearly another 15 years, longer than it had been any name. Amazingly, something almost happened that would've prevented that fate.

Albertsons must have had second thoughts about closing down the store, as the store had been popular (24 hours!) despite its obvious age, so in May 2000, they filed plans with the city to re-open the store as Albertsons #2797. This time, the Albertsons would gain a fancy "Albertsons University Market" branding and come complete with a Starbucks and "J.A.'s Kitchen", a deli concept (JA stood for Joe Albertson) that Albertsons played around with for a short while in smaller stores (from what I can tell, it was just the regular deli usually placed in smaller stores or drug sores).

This never got off the ground, obviously, and it remained vacant for over the next decade, despite some plans tossed around for redevelopment. Of course, a vacant building won't last forever, and in 2012, it finally began to come down, with demolition halting for months but continuing about a year later. The north wall stood for a long time, revealing that there was a second floor holding offices. While the demolition was intended for redevelopment, it and about half of the remaining shopping center just ended up becoming a field for a nearby apartment complex located behind the strip center.

An ad from the brief Jewel-Osco days. Note the "Special Supplement to The Eagle" to the left.

There's even a shot of a Sunny Delight bottle as I remember it, before they changed it to "Sunny D" (and later "SunnyD"). Tangy Original was called "Florida Style" and "Smooth" was "California Style".
Other shots, taken January 2011...






Regrettably, I couldn't get any of the interior on that shot, or any other time: the windows were painted over, and my one shot of the interiors was kind of messed up by the flash, and while it did capture some of the interior in a blurry configuration that revealed rows of fluorescents and columns, it mostly created a reflection of me, which, of course, I'm not posting.


Whoa, Albertsons was open 24 hours! Must have been super-convenient, relatively rare (I don't think even H-E-B did when it first opened), and must have been fun to see at night when the bars had closed for the night.


What was left of Albertsons after the first major demo.


The first Christmas at the store.


Albertsons interior. This looks like the "Blue & Gray Interior" (Official Stalworth Picture)


From The Eagle, shortly after the demo began.

The Last AppleTree - Bryan

A brief stay as "Food City". Picture from Stalworth Online. This is after a repaint.

Safeway #736
Address: 2001 Highway 21
Bryan TX
Opened: 1986
Became AppleTree: 1989
Closed: 2009?

Rounding out the four Safeway stores that died as AppleTree in Bryan-College Station, today we have the fourth. Originally written as a post on Brazos Buildings & Businesses, this was one of the last group of Houston Division Safeway stores to be built, and the very last AppleTree store to close.

With the larger Weingarten store in the Safeway family just a few miles south, a decision was made to close the original downtown store, and have it replaced with a larger store a few miles north, giving it some more distance from the second Safeway (a third Safeway in town was more toward the east part of town by then).

This particular Safeway opened in early 1986 as store #736 and the anchor of the small Culpepper North, a shopping center at Highway 21 and Texas Avenue. It replaced the store at Texas Avenue and William Joel Bryan (#294, that's now the Health Department). By 1988, however, Safeway had already spun off the division, and in 1989, the new company had changed names to AppleTree.

Almost immediately, of course, AppleTree began to suffer, and the "apples" began to fall. Declaring bankruptcy in early 1992, one of the first to go was the former Weingarten store, and within 24 months, the chain went from 95 to about 6. The new independent chain lost its last stores in Houston and Huntsville within a few years after that, but the remaining few stores soldiered on. The first signs that AppleTree was about to go away forever was in 2002, when the College Station store closed, unable to fend off a huge H-E-B that opened a stoplight away. The Briarcrest store, having been replaced in the late 1980s and one of the most modern, up to date stores in the chain (though hardly up to date or large in modern standards), went next, selling the store to the landlord when the lease ran out, who kept it open and renamed it. Finally, this one was left, and remained until around late 2009 when the AppleTree letters came off in favor of a store called "Super Canasta", which was a Hispanic supermarket (there is a color AppleTree picture on Yelp, albeit tiny).

No bravado followed this passing of the AppleTree name, and for all intents and concerns, AppleTree had been dead for years, just another no-name company that was a client of Grocers Supply Co. in Houston. Super Canasta soon gave way to Food City (owned by El Ahorro) which gave it its own name in a matter of months. Food City/El Ahorro was the first to do away with the old Safeway/AppleTree décor, and in summer of 2013, El Ahorro sold to La Michoacana Meat Market, which downsized and didn't use all the store space (it wasn't very large to begin with). You'll notice that all the stores are supplied by the same company, so the store names still have the same trucks coming in. In the same plaza, there's also a Family Dollar (since day one?) and a few other stores.

By the way, until a few years ago, there was an AppleTree in San Diego, which had been there since at least 2005-2006. The sign looks slightly different than the Bryan ones (looks they painted solid colors over the apples and the logo), but there's no relation, and it's likely they bought the sign from Texas. It's worth wondering about: there were once nearly 100 of these things, some sign exists somewhere.

Finally, here's an article and some small black and white shots of some of the Bryan AppleTrees from a 2004 BTU article. What's interesting is that every single mainstream Bryan supermarket has closed or moved since 2004. The AppleTree on Briarcrest was the least affected, and it closed and reopened with a different name. Everything else moved (Kroger, H-E-B), or flat out closed (Albertsons, the other AppleTree in Bryan).

Former Safeway #714 - College Station, TX

Safeway and later AppleTree was right in the middle of these two stores.

1725 Texas Avenue South • College Station, TX
This one was one I prepared sometime last month: it's the Safeway in my home town. Safeway's Texas expansion was still on the upswing in the 1970s, and in 1976, College Station, Texas got its very own Safeway store (there were two in Bryan), anchoring the large Culpepper Plaza shopping center, with a lease that lasted the better half of a century (I don't recall exactly, but it was in the ballpark of 60 years). The store wasn't all that large by modern standards but adequately sized for the mid-1970s at a size of 40,000 square feet.

What was remarkable about the Safeway was the competition it weathered over the years. I believe by that time, a Piggly Wiggly (originally Brookshire Brothers), arguably the first full-line supermarket in College Station proper, had already closed. It became an AppleTree in August 1989 with the renaming of the Texas Safeway stores, and because I don't have any interior pictures (when it closed I was still fairly young and certainly not old enough to think about taking pictures).

Here's a chart to show exactly what the store was up against. The distance on the main stretch is 2.75 miles between Farm to Market Road 2818 and University Drive, and I've marked some 10(!) competitors besides our store, though luckily none of them competed all at the same time. You'll have to see it at full size to see what I'm talking about here. The map is arranged so to the right is actually the south.

At the time, I'm not sure if the Redmond Terrace Piggly Wiggly was still there (at the southeast corner of Texas Avenue and George Bush Drive, though of course it wasn't called that at the time, and before you ask, it's named after H.W.), but competition included the Skaggs-Albertsons (soon to be Skaggs-Alpha Beta), located at "9", the Lewis & Coker near Kmart (at "8") which would soon be another Piggly Wiggly by 1977, and FedMart (located at "2). The Safeway is marked on the map with a red "S".

In the early 1980s, competition would begin heating up with a Kroger (6), a short-lived Weingarten (3), and a Winn-Dixie Marketplace (5). During that time, FedMart would close, but just as well since our store had bigger problems. Toward the end of the 1980s, Piggly Wiggly would close as well (so at 1989, 9, 5, 6, are all still open).

The early 1990s brought the opening of a massive Randall's (1) and Albertsons (7), but also H-E-B Pantry (4), the no-frills H-E-B spin-off that lacked pharmacies or full-service departments. During all this time, AppleTree at the corporate level was "dropping apples" rather quickly in Houston and those were carted off by competitors by Fiesta, Kroger, Randalls, and independents.

However, this AppleTree stayed open and continued to fight off its competitors, even managing to outlive Winn-Dixie, which closed at some point in the 1990s. By 2000, there were two Albertsons (7 and 1), a dated Kroger (6), and the H-E-B Pantry (4). Another Kroger opened that year, but it was even more toward the south. There was also another Winn-Dixie more toward the north that remained open all the way up to 2002, but these two stores were far away from AppleTree.

Then, in 2002, it happened. A huge H-E-B (10) opened practically across the street from AppleTree (one stoplight up), which had the advantage of being newer, bigger, cleaner, cheaper, fancier, and overall better. Despite decades still left on the lease, AppleTree closed within 9 months of the opening of the H-E-B. Notice that the AppleTree did not compete with a Walmart Supercenter, the Wal-Mart in town wasn't a Supercenter until well after AppleTree closed for good.

I remember that AppleTree remained standing with the logo on the side of the building advertising space for lease, but what would end up happening is that around the mid-2000s, it would be partially demolished for two new stores: a Spec's Liquor and an OfficeMax (the facades have absolutely no trace of the 1970s Safeway design), though the latter would open several years later (the OfficeMax is the one that holds the original Safeway/AppleTree address). This was in conjunction of a redevelopment of the whole shopping center that would tear out the center of it for a Kohl's.

I say partially demolished because the footprint is the same though the facade is totally different, the south wall is totally different, and the back wall is totally different. There used to be extra walls that jutted out behind the AppleTree (see page 6).

AppleTree as a name would cease to exist within a few years when the last two stores were sold off. But despite that, there are traces of the old AppleTree still there. When I was applying to a job at Spec's (I didn't even get an interview), I was trying to look for some traces of the old store. And sure enough, I found some! These scars in the pavement, I believe, were in fact the spaces where the doors to the Safeway/AppleTree were. Of course, today, they lead to nothing.

Between the premature loss of Randalls and the later loss of Albertsons, there's no presence of Safeway or Albertsons in town anymore, which is a shame...

The Original Bryan Weingarten - Bryan

From this photo gallery.

Safeway #1111
Address: 1010 Texas Avenue S. (originally 1010 College Avenue)
Bryan, TX
Opened (as Weingarten): 1954
Opened (as Safeway): 1984
Became AppleTree: 1989
What's There Now: Rockies, C&J Barbecue, Bingo Barn

This post was originally based on "Weingarten Supermarket, Bryan" from Brazos Buildings & Businesses

Weingarten was an old-line Houston supermarket chain (it became a real estate manager later), colloquially Weingarten's (which was on the sign). While a lot of Weingarten stores became Safeway stores in Houston (and later AppleTree), not all of them did--the companion College Station store which lasted no more than around 2 months, Weingarten's here lasted for about three decades before it changed hands and closed less than a decade later. Either way, Safeway's time with Weingarten, from picking up many stores in 1984 to spinning off the chain in the late 1980s with the AppleTree division wasn't a long time, but it was important.

Opening on September 1, 1954, the 25,000 square foot supermarket was not only the largest in Bryan, but featured a variety of things unusual at the time, though may seem commonplace today. These included a self-service deli, a general merchandise department "where the housewife can find everything from work clothes to dresses to cooking equipment", a drug and tobacco department, "magic carpet" automatic doors, a lunch counter, a children's daycare area "where they'll find comic books and other things to keep their attention", and a full-service butcher department. Courtesy of John Ellisor, check out the article from which these great facts were derived from.

While I can't imagine much general merchandise fitting in an area that seems pretty small itself for a grocery store, nevertheless, Weingarten stayed in this spot for nearly the next three decades before Weingarten's owners at the time, Grand Union, decided to divest the division.

The Weingarten was unceremoniously sold to Safeway in January 1984 but I don't know if Safeway rebranded the store or closed it and reopened it under its own name. Confusingly, the store remained open as the Safeway store at William Joel Bryan and North Texas Avenue did so (just a mile north) until that store moved in 1986 to Culpepper North (which would later be the last AppleTree store, ever). The sale of many Weingarten stores to Safeway was ultimately the undoing of the Houston division and later the AppleTree chain, as the Weingarten stores added to the Safeway Houston Division store count but were horribly dated by the mid-1980s and there wasn't ultimately any money to renovate the stores.

When AppleTree filed for bankruptcy in January 1992, the store at 1010 South Texas Avenue (originally 1010 South College Avenue, which was the road that ran on the store's west side), this one was one of the first go after just a mere three years, especially considering that the original Weingarten had been going for 30 years under that name. By the time AppleTree completely spun off as a fully independent chain with just half a dozen stores, this store had been referred to as one of the "dogs" as described by Richard Goeggel, VP of AppleTree at the time.

FOUR AppleTrees in town! No wonder College Station-Bryan kept AppleTree through 2009.
Later becoming Williams Furniture Company (see comments on the original BB&B page), part of the store is used to host 1016 S. Texas Avenue, a space used as a nightclub. Some basic Google searching shows that there was "Prime Time Nightclub" and "Whiskey River" recently, the latter predating the former, but not by much, but now it's Rockies (full name: "Rockies The Canyon") moved from its long-time spot at Post Oak Mall. 1018 S. Texas Avenue has been Bingo Barn for years, and at 1010 S. Texas Avenue, C&J Barbecue hangs off of the end, which I didn't get too good of a picture of. Note that despite the visible "old" C&J logo above, it's not the original location.

The pictures are bad because the sun was setting and I was taking it out of the car window (the neighborhood seemed a bit sketchy, although it was still daytime, I might've gotten out). I want to make another return trip to it, see if I can find more things about it. Mysteries abound still: as shown by the gallery linked above, there's a chimney in the back (and not on the C&J BBQ side either) and a lack of modern loading docks. I wondered if it had a railroad spur at one time, and that may be actually the case (a spur definitely ran through the area where Advance Auto Parts is, just south of the store). After all, trucks weren't as commonplace in 1954 as today, and shipping things from Brownsville sounds awfully harrowing for trucks in 1950s-era highways. But I don't know of any grocery stores in the 1950s that actually had railroad spurs. If anyone knows more about this store, such as that.

Former Safeway #249 - Bryan, TX

Boring government building or a disguised old supermarket? You decide!
201 North Texas Avenue • Bryan TX

This post also appears on Brazos Buildings & Businesses

In October 1950, Safeway opened store #249 in Bryan, Texas, when they were a much smaller company than they later grew to be. It was likely from the Dallas division originally.

Used to be here! (1960)

Now it's here! (1971)
In the mid-1960s, Safeway rebuilt their store directly behind their old one. The reasoning for this was never fully explained, especially since the store was only 15 years old at the time and there were no serious issues reported in the press (foundation issues, right of way clearance).

In 1986, the store closed, probably to distance from the newly-acquired Weingarten store just a bit down the road. The replacement store would last as a Safeway as just a few years before becoming an AppleTree. It would be the last AppleTree until Kubicek sold out around 2009.

Sometime within the next 5 years of 1986 it was remodeled into the Brazos County Health Department, though I could've sworn that they've done an exterior remodel in recent years--the old one was distinctly grocery store-shaped. Regardless of what they did to the front, there's some rockwork on the side of the store: that's one sign that it was a Safeway, I suppose.

Former Albertsons #2701 - College Station, TX (Old Post)

January 2011. The Albertsons had been closed for about 13 years by this point.
#2701
301 South College Avenue
College Station, TX
Opened: 1971 (as Skaggs-Albertsons), 1992 (as Albertsons)
Closed: 1997
Demolished: 2012-2013

This post was originally based on "Skaggs Albertsons / Skaggs Alpha Beta / Jewel-Osco / Albertsons" from Brazos Buildings & Businesses

One of the more interesting partnerships in supermarket history, Skaggs Drug Centers ran a highly successful group of drug stores. It was only natural that they would team up with a respected (but regional) name to create a chain of large food and drug combos when such a thing was more of a novelty than something expected, and Skaggs Albertsons was born.

Courtesy John Ellisor

Located just north of the Texas A&M University campus, Skaggs Albertsons ran a successful store from opening in 1971 on.

Wikipedia says that the partnership dissolved in 1977, but this store (and likely the others in Texas and Florida) did become Skaggs Alpha Beta in 1979 (as the parent company, Skaggs Companies, bought American Stores, and took their name). It went straight from Skaggs Albertsons to Skaggs Alpha Beta, which I can dig up the microfilm to prove. This changeover happened in November 1979.

In 1991, American Stores Inc. rebranded their remaining Alpha Beta stores in the South as Jewel-Osco (a brand bought in 1984), which was strange since the rest of the Jewel-Osco stores were states away. This set-up didn't last too long, and in 1992, they sold the stores to Albertson's Inc., which would reopen the stores as Albertsons.

Albertsons had a location in College Station opened just a year prior several miles away, but College Station's second Albertsons didn't last long (why it had 2701 even though it opened after 1991 is a mystery to me...perhaps the original 2701 was cancelled, or it was renumbered?). Despite being a 24 hour location and working off a huge base of college students, in November 1997, this store closed and would be replaced by a new store in a former Randall's, and the store was left to ruin. It wasn't until 2012 until demolition began and today, the building's footprint (as well as some adjacent store spaces) is greenspace for a nearby apartment complex.

In that time, Albertsons had grown even more (if briefly), before selling itself off in 2006, dashing the last of the Skaggs legacy by disposing of its drug store chains, pulling out of numerous markets, and getting to close to buying back the stores it sold off to SuperValu.

This concludes the Albertsons in the Bryan/College Station area. There's still Safeway to go but while I still plan on featuring a very old Safeway in less than a few weeks, I'm holding off on any further old Safeway stores until the merger closes, and enough to feature more Albertsons.

The Brazos Buildings & Businesses link (and link back to the main University Square article) has more info on the stores surrounding it and even a few shots (collected) of demolition, as well as further shots poking around the exterior (like the signage where it explains that the pharmacy records have been moved to their original College Station store, and not the store it quickly reopened as a replacement (the old Randalls).


What was left of Albertsons after the first major demo. For a time you could see where a second-level office mezzanine was.


The first Christmas at the store.


Albertsons interior. This looks like the "Blue & Gray Interior" (Official Stalworth Picture)


From The Eagle, shortly after the demo began.

Former Albertsons #2702 - College Station, TX

Sorry about the sunlight, it makes it rather difficult to take a shot.
2205 Longmire Drive • College Station, TX

This was based off of a post I wrote on Brazos Buildings & Businesses, which itself was based on a post from Two Way Roads, my old now-defunct blog and what BB&B spun off from.

Albertsons is on the left, Wal-Mart is on the right completing its first expansion.
This was the home of the first Albertsons in town, opened in 1991 near a major intersection with Wal-Mart next to it and Kmart across the way. Despite coming in with relatively low prices, thanks to the expansion of H-E-B Pantry and the pre-existing Kroger market, Albertsons would never really thrive in this town, despite beating or tying Kroger for store count of full line stores until 2006.

Despite blogging about this type of thing, my family actually never really shopped at Albertsons. Not because it was far away: it was actually one of the closest grocery stores to where we lived, but because the prices were substantially higher (and overall quality worse), so we ended up going to H-E-B Pantry Foods (and later a full-size H-E-B) and Kroger. Of course, while the Albertsons in question doesn't have a lot of fine memories for me, but I did visit it often enough to remember some things about it.

Around 2002, it remodeled, as the grocery market was heating up around it, probably to compete with the Kroger a mile north of it (an updated, albeit badly, Greenhouse model, and also one that outlasted a Winn-Dixie Marketplace catty-corner to it), and a large (Signature store) Kroger that opened in 2000 a mile south of it (also holding a Longmire address, natch).

The décor wasn't anything all that special (it certainly wasn't the "Grocery Palace", aka "Theme Park" décor), but I remember that a large mirror that you ran the length near the checkouts. Apparently it was where the break room and offices were. It also added a Starbucks Coffee kiosk. Sometime after the remodel, it also added a little Sav-on logo to the front. If I recall correctly, the remodel changed it to the "Marketplace" décor package from the "Blue & Gray" model.

Seeing as how I don't have interior pictures (a visit less than a year ago had the store gutted entirely down to a shell), I'm going to try to walk through what I remember. Albertsons had two doors on either side, you walked in the alcove, grabbed your cart, and in the right, that was where the bakery and deli sections were, in the back was a fairly long fish counter that always smelled like fish because they couldn't move the product fast enough, on the back left was the dairy and ice cream, and in the front you had the customer service section. I think the produce was on the left side, and the Starbucks was definitely on the right. There was also a video rental place, we went there around 2003-2004. The discs were scratched up and it even had some old N64 (maybe even SNES!) games for rental, but it was cheap. Later on, this was totally gutted for Texas A&M sports apparel (I think in 2005, which according to my records we visited after a weekend at Galveston, an adventure documented over at Two Way Roads), which would remain until the store's closure in 2008.

The summer 2008 closure seemed to confirm a long-standing rumor that Wal-Mart would buy the store for a Supercenter expansion, and in 2009, part of the store was demolished to make room for a physical expansion. After the Walmart was finished, the exterior walls of the old Albertsons were repainted a different shade of brown to match Walmart's color palette.

Ripping into the old Albertsons, 2009.
Walmart actually uses some of the space of the Albertsons for storage and occasional other uses (sometimes the front of the gutted store was used for hiring fairs), and there's even a physical connection to the current Walmart. In August 2017, the space reopened as Altitude Trampoline Park.

Post-Walmart expansion
(Slight update 6/21/16)

Former Albertsons #2796 - Bryan, TX

Albertsons never lasted long in Bryan, unfortunately.

1901 Texas Avenue South • Bryan, TX
This Albertsons opened in 2002 at one of the weird times of Albertsons history, wherein the Houston stores were collapsing and yet this store opened, a shining specimen in an "urban renewal" project that brought the moribund 1958 Townshire Shopping Center back to life. It also included a gas station under the name Albertsons Express.

Let me tell you that the Houston division, and we'll explore this later with some notoriously bad stores, weren't the best at choosing locations. I'm sure that the Albertsons here was probably coaxed in with some city TIF funds, which probably kept it alive as it did. The Albertsons physically replaced (rebuilt) an old Sears store, which was was never very big and had been a variety of other uses since Sears moved to Post Oak Mall in 1982. The last use were college classes which took off circa 1998 when a new campus was built.

Now, Townshire did have a Safeway (read more about that on the original post), but this post is about the Albertsons that later inhabited it. In 2002, the grocery market in Bryan wasn't like it is today. During the time, Albertsons was competing with a 1970s-era Kroger and a 1990s-era H-E-B Pantry, and it was bigger than H-E-B and newer than Kroger, so it had advantages. Additionally, the AppleTree was located a few miles down the road as well. Either way, it probably was one of the biggest and certainly the nicest supermarkets in Bryan for a while. So what happened?

Well, within a few years, the H-E-B moved to a larger store a few blocks down at the redeveloped Manor East Mall site (now Tejas Center), and the problems at Albertsons corporate didn't help matters much either. It was the first on the chopping block post-breakup in 2006 and was shuttered along with much of the Central Texas stores at the time. Based on the short life and the local sentiment, the store likely lost money hand over fist, which is big compared to the other two then-living Albertsons in town still doing business, plus the two AppleTrees in town (a Safeway legacy) were doing fine too. Part of the other huge problem was the demographics were all wrong--there were decades-old apartment buildings just next to it, run-down motels across the street, and the grocery store was more expensive then the ones around it.

And so went the Bryan Albertsons and what Acme Style dubs the "Theme Park" décor (also, "Grocery Palace", as it's known). In 2012 or so, the Albertsons gas station reopened as a generic "Tigerland Express" (not Exxon, nor did it keep any of the "Express" signage), and in the summer of 2013, a new Walmart grocery store finally opened after several years of rumors (not to mention the complete exodus of Albertsons from the market altogether, by this time).

Walmart gutted the store but didn't actually alter the facade too much besides a partial repaint (honestly, I think it looks much better that way, sans Walmart branding). Here's my picture of the Walmart Neighborhood Market. You could see the façade incorporates much of the old Albertsons facade, though they painted parts brown (as opposed to the original tan-red color and blue for the decorative arch). Walmart does have a separate door for liquor sales; unfortunately, I don't believe there was one for Albertsons.

The source photo above, as well as shots of the interior with the "Theme Park" décor can be found here, mirrored from its original source. The newsletter certainly is interesting, as within five years, all the major grocery stores but one (and that last one has since been torn down and replaced) has either changed its name, moved, or gone out of business.

In a surprising turn of events, it turned out that even Walmart couldn't hack it, and the store ended up on the January 2016 closing list of stores, causing the store to be vacant once more. The only remnant is the former Albertsons Express/Tigerland Express. Someone I knew was telling me how sketchy the "Tigerland Express" gas station was, and was surprised to learn that even an Albertsons existed in that spot. Clearly, this was a terrible location for any grocery store.

This post was originally based on "Townshire Shopping Center" from Brazos Buildings & Businesses

Village Foods

Village Foods back in the AppleTree days. (Picture from Holcombe of Hidalgo, used with permission
NOTE: Village Foods is now closed. This post will be updated soon to reflect that. Please stand by...
This post was originally based on "Village Foods" from Brazos Buildings & Businesses

Safeway #1193
Address: 1760 Briarcrest Drive
Bryan, TX
Opened: 1988?
Became AppleTree: 1989
Became Village Foods: 2008

One of the last and biggest stores Safeway ever built in the Houston division, this store actually never closed, just swapped names numerous times with merchandising differences, eventually becoming a locally run store with just one location, this one.

It also never renovated (just received updates). Becoming an AppleTree in 1989 (so it never really served long as a Safeway) and replacing a 1970s-era Safeway catty-corner across to the store, unlike the great AppleTree burn-out in 1993, the store was one of six saved and remained open a number of years afterward, even into 2008 when it was finally sold to the landlord and re-merchandised to include more natural and organic products.

It's actually not some sort of Whole Foods knock-off, which it wasn't, and actually scared off a few loyal customers who (wrongly) believed the prices had shot up. The store retained much of the original AppleTree décor (as seen in some of the pictures) but would ultimately take most of them down (some AppleTree remnants remain in the store, but you'll have to look for them). What's neat about it is its decor, which is largely from the late 1980s (and a far cry from the drab exposed HVAC of other stores). These are photos I took in 2011, and even those have changed (the green trim, a product of the AppleTree takeover is now tan, plus more neon has been removed, and that "Reading Center" is now a painted "Village Wine & Beer Garden"). Originally, there were photos of the products sold in the departments, but these were replaced with Texas A&M-themed graphics later on after the conversion. Pictures of the pre-Village Foods AppleTree are found on Flickr (the top row, for some reason the photos are not all in the person's Photostream and the tags don't work).





You will, of course, notice that there's the AppleTree logo still intact (and that neat cake, but that's besides the point) and even a scratched-up cart that still bears the name.

Here's a few other pictures taken in and around Village Foods in summer of 2013, showcasing neat old quirks like the original Dr Pepper fixtures from the late 1980s and a few of the variety meats that Village Foods sells that are hard to find elsewhere (in particular, oxtails). I've spent a lot of time at this particular store recently, and I can tell you which songs I've heard on the in-store muzak more than once (for those curious, I've heard a few ELO songs, including "Don't Bring Me Down", but others include "My Sharona" by The Knack, "One Way or Another" by Blondie, or "Power of Love" by Huey Lewis and the News). Some are classics, some not, and some are pretty awful (cover versions of Beatles songs come to mind).

An explanation for the last one--it was a peeled-off sticker from a fixture they were reusing to sell candy, which saw its primary use in the 1990s (notice dated logos—click to zoom in). Despite the slow disappearance of the store's heritage, it is entirely worth seeing.

By the way, do visit the photostream as linked above, there's more pictures from the classic AppleTree days.