Edmonds, WA: Marina ex-Safeway endangered?

[TheStranger]

http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/06/05/ ... nds001.cfm

http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/07/02/ ... ont001.cfm

EDMONDS - An antique mall that used to be a Safeway store is among the most prominent features separating downtown Edmonds from its picturesque waterfront.

A group of public and private landowners hopes to change that.

The Port of Edmonds, the city and two companies have agreed to pay a consulting firm $80,000 to come up with options to redevelop land adjacent to the waterfront.

The area is west of Highway 104, east of the railroad tracks, north of Edmonds Marsh and south of the ferry terminal. It includes the Harbor Square Business Park, the Edmonds Shopping Center site and Skippers restaurant.

Not sure if I've posted this in the Northwest thread a while back, but in any case, here's what the building looks like, currently as the "Waterfront Antique Mall." It's at 190 Sunset Avenue.

http://local.live.com/?v=2&sp=Point.rz1 ... d%20States___

[tkaye]

I know the location you're talking about... it amazes me that they built a store on the waterfront like that. I'd have figured that would have been prime land for a more expensive development than a Safeway even in the '60s. Apparently not. Nevertheless, you could call it a waterfront Marina! :-)

Speaking of waterfront Marinas, Safeway also had a store on the shore side of Bay Street in Port Orchard. That building is a St. Vincent de Paul thrift store now, if memory serves me right. The difference is that almost all of the Port Orchard waterfront is lined with retail buildings of some sort, while the Edmonds waterfront is much more sparsely developed.

[TheStranger]

This looks to be the Port Orchard ex-Safeway:

http://local.live.com/?v=2&sp=Point.rxq ... d%20States___

Roof looks somewhat more acute than the usual design, though this may just be due to the additions on the building.

[tkaye]

This looks to be the Port Orchard ex-Safeway:

http://local.live.com/?v=2&sp=Point.rxq ... d%20States___

Roof looks somewhat more acute than the usual design, though this may just be due to the additions on the building.

Now that I look at it, I realize this is obviously a pre-Marina building. The assessor's records back me up -- it was built in 1953. But it was Safeway until it relocated to the High Point Shopping Center on Bethel Road in the mid-70s.

[TheStranger]

Could this have been one of those pylon-to-marina conversions?

[tkaye]

Could this have been one of those pylon-to-marina conversions?

It's quite possible... I never realized how severe the roof arch was until looking at that bird's eye photo. If I recall correctly, this building doesn't have as much glass in the facade as your average Marina.

[TheStranger]

Could this have been one of those pylon-to-marina conversions?

It's quite possible... I never realized how severe the roof arch was until looking at that bird's eye photo. If I recall correctly, this building doesn't have as much glass in the facade as your average Marina.

I do wonder if there are any photos of it as a Safeway (especially from the 1960s) out there...also do wonder how much of the current building is original.

[tkaye]

I was wrong... that building was not a Safeway, it was a TB & M Supermarket, which was a small local chain based in Bremerton. (TB & M was later bought by Keith Uddenberg of Gig Harbor and the stores were turned into Thriftways in the '70s.)

If you look at that satellite photo again, Safeway was in the Westbay Shopping Center next door (the one that's clearly built on landfill... it comes to a 90-degree angle on one corner!) The correct address is 1341 Bay St. Here's an article (and current photo) with more information on the development: http://www.kpbj.com/headlines/articles/ ... ED-17.html. The shopping center has been modified very little... basically a coat of beige paint and that "Westbay Center" overhang that was plopped down in front of the gable. After Safeway left for the Bethel Road location, independent grocers occupied the space until the early '90s. Its last incarnation as a supermarket was as an IGA. (There hasn't been an IGA in Kitsap County since.) I know there was an indoor driving range there for a few years... I think everything else after that has been pretty short-lived.

That place must be built on a lot of fill... a creek passes underneath it as well. It amazes me to think that it must have been cheaper in 1960 to fill in prime shoreline than to clear timber from and grade another undeveloped parcel. Admittedly, Bay Street was the only way into town from Bremerton in those days (unless you rode the foot ferry), so the high traffic count certainly was a factor as well.

[VibeGuy]

My intrepid partner recalls that the Westbay Safeway was flanked by a Sprouse-Reitz and an HP drugstore, and that each of the three relocated up the hill to
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2& ... e=10366021
sometime after 1975. That Safeway was replaced by a newer version another mile or so up Bethel, conveniently just outside the city limits, sometime in the mid to late 80s, in a center that combined a PayLess and a Safeway.

Eric

[tkaye]

My intrepid partner recalls that the Westbay Safeway was flanked by a Sprouse-Reitz and an HP drugstore, and that each of the three relocated up the hill to
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2& ... e=10366021
sometime after 1975.

You are correct, sir. That's the High Point Shopping Center I referenced earlier. If my memory serves me right, HP stood for Hannah-Powell Drugs -- an independent pharmacy (I believe they were supplied by Thrifty and later Rexall).