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!