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Old Safeway in downtown Tulsa

Posted: 23 Oct 2008 23:40
by army.arch
Does anyone know about Safeway's in Tulsa? Came across this old Safeway Marina type at the National Trust for Historic Preservation conference.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/army_arch/2966928400/

Re: Old Safeway in downtown Tulsa

Posted: 26 Oct 2008 00:41
by tesg
NICE.

I downloaded and brightened up the images (there's two) to see if any interior was captured, but it was mostly outside reflection. Could see some green support posts and a bit of an interior wall on the left side of the building, but nothing about the wall gave any clue of what the interior looks like, but the entry doors appear to have manual handles. They're clearly not original. This was something after Safeway.

Still, brightening it up revealed a very intact exterior...a lot of it probably in its original colors.

I e-mailed the guy at losttulsa.com to see if he had any info on this particular building.

Re: Old Safeway in downtown Tulsa

Posted: 26 Oct 2008 00:53
by krogerclerk
I wonder if this store ever made the conversion to Homeland Foods after 1988. The Oklahoma division which was the Oklahoma stores and the Texas panhandle stores were spun off as the privately operated Homeland Foods, which are now part of AG of Kansas City.
The Little Rock division became Harvest Foods and was breifly owned by the same investment firm. Houston division became AppleTree Markets and the Kansas City division became Food Barn. I believe most Food Barns ended up with AG as well. All these divisions had plenty of examples of gables and marinas and not had a major investment since the early 70's.

Re: Old Safeway in downtown Tulsa

Posted: 27 Oct 2008 16:45
by army.arch
Hey thanks for all of the information. I didn't get a chance to get out of the car and look in the windows, but maybe someone else did at the conference.

Re: Old Safeway in downtown Tulsa

Posted: 27 Oct 2008 21:12
by terryinokc
This building is still standing, and empty. It operated as a marina Safeway until the Oklahoma division of Safeway was sold....I believe in 1984 or 1985. It was operated as Homeland until the store permanently closed a couple of years ago.
The exterior was basically untouched from the Safeway times....the interior had minor wall graphic changes when Homeland did some quick remodeling.
The original Safeway clock was on the back wall over the dairy cases...and the marina ceiling is intact....
I took several exterior photos, and a couple of interior ones thru the glass....a year or two ago.....David should have some copies of these to post if he would like.....the building is just sitting there ready for another store....downtown Tulsa could probably support a full service store agaian.

Re: Old Safeway in downtown Tulsa

Posted: 27 Oct 2008 21:49
by Groceteria
terryinokc wrote:I took several exterior photos, and a couple of interior ones thru the glass....a year or two ago.....David should have some copies of these to post if he would like
I'll look for these as soon as I get a chance. I'm having an insane week (month? life?).

Re: Old Safeway in downtown Tulsa

Posted: 28 Oct 2008 09:11
by army.arch
And then here's another one down in Muskogee. Guess Safeway really expanded during this timeframe in eastern Oklahoma.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/army_arch/2978452538/

Thank for looking for the other pix, appreciate it.

Re: Old Safeway in downtown Tulsa

Posted: 02 Feb 2009 20:52
by Rob72830
Looks like Homeland went the same way as Harvest Foods. Nearly every store bought by them either sits empty or has some other type of business located there. I could show you several in Little Rock. BTW, after Harvest Foods AG went bankrupt in the 90's Harvest Foods was bought out by Affiliated Foods Southwest who then abandoned most of the old Safeway stores in favor of building smaller stores. They did keep a few but the majority were sold off. Ironically several are now Kroger's.