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 #42XX - Waco, TX

Car window view, because it sure doesn't look like Albertsons on the inside anymore. Here's a different shot with a closer color profile


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.

Losing the grocery store war to Winn-Dixie? For shame!

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.

Former Albertsons #2734 - Conroe, TX

3830 W. Davis St. • Conroe TX
I first noticed this store, now a Kroger, I believe in 2003, on a trip to Baton Rouge, Louisiana with my family. I was immediately drawn to it by the fact that at the time it still had the classic "Loopy K" as I called it (the Loewy-designed logo), which at the time seemed to be disappearing from every Kroger I knew (admittedly, only the Houston division, and of those, primarily the two Kroger stores in College Station). Of course, it "turned" within a few years (block lettering) as well, but one thing about the Kroger was the peculiar "Food" and "Pharmacy" signs that reminded me of Albertsons.

Google Street View

Surprise! It was one just a few years prior, and if I had been paying attention on the 2001 trip, I would have seen it as an Albertsons. Kroger bought numerous Albertsons stores in the greater Houston area, including one from 2001 in Willis (which was later abandoned as it was replaced with a Kroger Marketplace). From tax records, it indicates this one was built in 1996. Things to note include the gas station, which based on the shape was an Albertsons Express gas station (convenience store and all, now operates as Kroger's "Kwik Shop"). There also appears to be a separate entrance to another part of the store, perhaps a bank (not a liquor store)

I've never gone in, so I have no idea if Kroger uses remnants of Albertsons décor package (I wonder if it received new lettering after the renovation that fully "Kroger-ized" it). It was, however, quickly reopened, and for what it's worth, I do remember the lettering being permanent, not a banner hastily covering the Albertsons signage.

If I was just imagining the older logo being on here, please write in and correct me...

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 #4006 - Austin, TX

The empty Albertsons captured next to a former Shoney's. Own work, April 2010.

7100 U.S. Highway 290 • Austin TX

This Albertsons I saw in spring 2010, and I snapped this picture from a moving car with a crappy cell phone camera, so it is a bit blurry (that's an understatement). However, it's the only one I have. This post was one of the first on the blog and arguably one of the stores that inspired this blog.

Doing a bit of research into this store, it appears it opened as a Tom Thumb-Page sometime in the 1970s, partially judging by this page and others (one build date I have for the store is 1979). In 1988, Tom Thumb sold a number of its stores (including the Austin stores) to Albertsons, which reopened them within a week (meaning at one time they had original Tom Thumb décor). I've never been in this store, and I was only aware of its existence three years after its closure. I would say it was probably renovated into the Albertsons "Blue and Gray" décor and likely kept it during its nearly twenty-year run as an Albertsons. It was not a Skaggs Alpha Beta, as this link indicates, Skaggs Alpha Beta sold three stores to Albertsons in the late 1980s (notably, before their Jewel-Osco run) and this was not one of them.

In 2007, the store closed shortly before Albertsons exited the market and sold its remaining stores to H-E-B. Several had closed in the 2006 closures after LLC took over the Dallas-Fort Worth division, but this was not one of them. Because of an H-E-B across the street, Albertsons was left vacant and unable to secure a grocery tenant. Around 2011-2012, it was renovated into three store spaces (including Goodwill and Planet Fitness) around 2011-2012 and looks substantially different now. The picture below was taken from Loopnet after the store divided itself up, but in 2014, Goodwill expanded. Their entrance is in the center of the store now, with the old signage and entrance being removed.

While the parking lot across at the H-E-B has always been quite full, this Albertsons co-existed with it for twenty years (1986-2006), and the location is definitely busy. If things had gone right, the Albertsons would've been easily visible from the highway--around 2004, the right of way from Joe Tanner to the "Y" (where 71 merges with 290) was cleared, but no freeway exists yet due to heavy neighborhood resistance, despite the fact that the area is already congested. They've even gone so far as to transplant a century-old oak tree...and even now, TxDOT has complied with these demands, spending money to add continuous flow intersections to 290 instead of adding the freeway it needs.

If you have any further information on this store, please write a comment!

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.

Former Safeway (AppleTree) #934 - Houston, TX

////THIS PAGE IS STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION///

From Wikipedia Commons

Safeway #934 • Hedwig Village (Houston), TX
9325 Katy Freeway
Houston, TX
Opened: 1974 (according to HCAD)
Closed: January 1994 (quickly reopened as Kroger)
What's There Now: Kroger

A note about the address...this store (now a Kroger) is technically in Hedwig Village but has a Houston mailing address. This one I've actually been to, and is a bit interesting in terms of history. It was an early to mid 1970s Safeway with a floorplan of 28,000 square feet, but in 1990, AppleTree took expanded the floorplan to 46,000 square feet, making it one of the larger stores in the AppleTree stores and definitely the most modern. Unlike similar looking examples down at Gessner and Hammerly (now a Kroger) and in Bryan (later an indepedent supermarket, now closed), the store did not cluster the perishables in the center, unless Kroger reconfigured it (unlikely).

Despite the fancy signage, there isn't anything special about the Kroger today.

This store didn't originally look like this: it was a much smaller early 1970s-era Safeway until a renovation in 1990 expanded the footprint from about 28,000 to 46,000. As a result, it was one of the largest and most modern AppleTree stores in the chain, though that unfortunately didn't save it. It was based clearly after a modern Safeway prototype that Safeway had built right up to the end of when they sold out, examples exist in Bryan (now an independent supermarket) and another in Houston, also now a Kroger.

It was one of the many stores sold to Kroger in late 1993, closing and reopening in 1994. By this time, AppleTree had pared down the chain to its nicer and/or most successful stores (that being a relative term, some of the former stores were looking small and outdated even by the early/mid-1990s).

Another picture, this one I actually took. Awful shot, I know.
From about 2005-2008 the Katy Freeway underwent one of the largest widenings in freeway history, with dozens of buildings condemned, but surprisingly, this shopping center didn't get it (the Fiesta Mart catty-corner wasn't that lucky, losing a good chunk of its parking lot--although you could argue that they were looking for a way out, a product of a largely failed expansion to the suburbs, but I digress).

It was going to be expected that if the layout was anything like the current Village Foods in Bryan, it was going to have Kroger's standard décor package (there was no way that Kroger kept the AppleTree decor for the last twenty years). And I was kind of disappointed at the awkward layout of the store, though it looked like beer and wine was always on the left (no interior pictures, sorry).

Former Albertsons #2758 / Former Randalls - College Station, TX

The decaying monolith beckons.
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.


Approaching the store. The pharmacy has already closed.

Notice that the Early Bird Cleaners is already dark.

Ceiling, entrance.

The in-store florist is already closed.

The pharmacy is gone, too.


Final shoppers stroll to snatch up good bargains.


Closest thing to a bulk section, apparently


"Watered" aisles.


Let's meet the meat.

Magazines and books.


Frozen foods...

Pet foods...

...and shrimp ramen.

It's even more vibrant and better in real life. While the photos make the store appear a bit grungy, this was a very colorful and cool sign.


Another view.


Ceiling near beer and wine department. It's worth noting that when the store opened in 1991 as Randall's, and up until 1994 when the acquisition of Tom Thumb took place, this store did not sell any alcoholic beverages. Do you suppose this was originally the coffee bar?


Former video rental area.


I love these carousel things in the checkout lines. I think the other Albertsons over near Wal-Mart had them too.

Post closure, the bucket of soda is still there! (Courtesy "AggiePhil")

Those "Good Housekeeping" signs look kinda generic. Were they ever used in an Acme store? (Courtesy "AggiePhil")
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.