Apologies for not getting this out on Sunday, but I'd like to share with you another former Houston Albertsons. One of the more popular posts on Albertsons Florida Blog (which is this blog's main inspiration) is their look at #4466, the Port St. Lucie Albertsons, which closed in 2012 despite a recently renewed lease and supposed profitability (it's possible that it did well right before the recession, where the PSL area was hit heavily with foreclosures). Well, PSL did have a twin store (more like a multiple birth), 2766. Unlike 4466, which was mauled for a Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market, 2766 closed a decade prior and is now a Kroger, which kept the store intact.
Despite being updated with the same Kroger décor I've seen everywhere else (don't know the name), it still holds remarkably true to the 4466 layout. It has the same ceiling style and bore enough of a resemblance that I was able to look at the map with my phone and more or less follow it through. I could probably look at the pictures in AFB and visualize the "Theme Park" décor being in this store. The Starbucks was in the same place, the deli and meats were in the same place, and while the center store probably saw a rearrangement at some point, there were a few notable changes in the front. The old camera center had been converted to offices with the pet supply area converted to HBA, with the pharmacy next to it (it also added a walk-up pharmacy), and a bank space as well (this may have been part of the original layout), as well as a few other changes. The area around the florist was downsized (didn't see evidence of the former laundromat), as the customer service desk was moved either next to the restrooms or in front of the "Albertsons Reading Center" area. Assuming this store opened in 2000, it spent just about two years as an Albertsons before being sold to Kroger.
This part of town is very Kroger-concentrated due to their Albertsons purchases. Just two miles west on West Road is another Kroger (a Kroger Signature built around the turn of the millennium), and at that point, it's where you can find four Kroger stores within a three mile radius, two of which were former Albertsons (the other, of course, is 2790). This store replaced another Kroger store (at least functionally, I'm pretty sure there were a few years when both were open) 2 miles south (a former AppleTree) which had managed to co-exist with another Kroger store (closed around 2009) located a mile and a half southeast from that (also 290). Incredible!
I didn't get a lot of pictures of the store, unfortunately, but the former Albertsons Express is still in business as Kroger's "Kwik Shop", which is run by their convenience store division (a full Kroger-run and Kroger-branded convenience store was opened in College Station in 2016, and that made industry headlines).
I believe the official name for this Kroger interior is "Bountiful", as was discovered on a Kroger planning document. After replacing the Kroger interior with the Albertsons one in that interior picture, I immediately got my bearings as to where that photo was taken. The layout at 4466 and 2766 was very common. Albertsons was extremely aggressive at building stores of this style in Texas and Florida, according to one article I read. Texas got the first "Theme Park" store, and Florida got the second (4464).
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