Mini-Marina - Hearne, TX

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krogerclerk
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Location: Northwest Georgia

Re: Mini-Marina - Hearne, TX

Post by krogerclerk »

I would suspect the expansion of Safeway to Houston was done via the Dallas division and some stores that were located closer to Houston than Dallas were transferred into the Houston division. I would guess Hearne was a 1960's outlying Dallas division store that became part of the Houston division in 1969 when the division was created. Hearnne's distance from Dallas is only slightly greater than its distance from Houston. Likely Bryan-College Station was a Dallas Safeway outpost long before the creation of a Houston division and possibly the base of a district that would have included Hearne.
pseudo3d
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Re: Mini-Marina - Hearne, TX

Post by pseudo3d »

The first Bryan store was built well before the Houston division opened its first store, so yeah, it's probably true. The stores became the Houston (AppleTree) division later, unfortunately, the Hearne store had long been gone (as well as the original Bryan Safeway).
pseudo3d
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Re: Mini-Marina - Hearne, TX

Post by pseudo3d »

The Hearne Democrat is online in Newspapers.com, featuring newspapers there that go from the 1950s to the 1970s (roughly). Besides a mention of a Safeway opening in Bryan opening in the late 1950s (the first in the area, long before the Houston division), there's no mention of a Safeway in Hearne.

The Marina look just wasn't all that common in Texas, and by the time the AppleTree changeover came over, most of them were gone already (and no, the Safeway-turned-AppleTree in San Diego doesn't count--seems an independent just bought surplus signage).

There's evidence that a San Marcos store was a Marina, but it was completely rebuilt sometime in the past, became an AppleTree, then a Randalls, and eventually an H-E-B.

Up the road, Waco had replaced at least one of its Safeway stores with a larger location, and even in Bryan, a Safeway was built (one of the terra-cotta roof styles) that was replaced with a new store catty-corner less than 12 years later.

This is combined with the fact that Safeway already started to close stores in the Houston division a few years before they sold off. I'm not sure if they included Marina stores (some concrete-looking ones were remodeled into H-E-B Pantry stores), but if they were, they were long gone.
wnetmacman
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Re: Mini-Marina - Hearne, TX

Post by wnetmacman »

pseudo3d wrote:The Marina look just wasn't all that common in Texas
No, the Marina style wasn't that common in the Houston division. They were built throughout the Dallas division. There are still many examples of them in Austin, Dallas and several other towns in the northern part of the state.

When the Houston division was started, many of the southern stores were moved to that division (including Austin, Bryan/College Station, etc.)

Essentially, as we've discussed before, this store was most likely a one-off. Nobody else in Texas built stores like this. Here are a few street shots of some stores:

http://goo.gl/maps/bN3pA
Austin

http://goo.gl/maps/ApcnF
Henderson

http://goo.gl/maps/bbRYF
Marshall

http://goo.gl/maps/yLj29
Atlanta, TX

http://goo.gl/maps/sDwyx
Fort Worth

I can do this all day. Not too many in Texas are still grocery stores, mostly due to their size. That Hearne store WAS a Safeway. It may not have lasted long, but it was.
Scott Greer
pseudo3d
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Re: Mini-Marina - Hearne, TX

Post by pseudo3d »

Like I said, it would've mentioned in advertising between the 1950s and 1970s in the papers, and I had a friend who subscribes to Newspapers.com had searched.

[Name],
Newspapers.com has The Hearne Democrat from 1931 through 1977, mostly complete. I searched "Safeway" and "Safe-Way" and "Safe Way" and only had one hit regarding the grocery chain. It was for a Safeway truck out of Bryan that crashed on its way through Hearne.

[Redacted]
So I did some digging, and I found this.

Brookshire Brothers opened here in 1966, tilt-up construction, corner of 2nd and Post Oak. It was never a Safeway. Sorry. :-/
terryinokc
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Re: Mini-Marina - Hearne, TX

Post by terryinokc »

Still a Marina store operating as a supermarket in Wichita Falls.
It is called Kings Market---a Mexican store.
Interior, and exterior for that matter. have both seen better days.
pseudo3d
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Re: Mini-Marina - Hearne, TX

Post by pseudo3d »

Wichita Falls sounds like it was Dallas division, which was broken up (which would probably be worth telling--I heard lot of its stores were too small and old, something that screwed over AppleTree from Day One, and that Minyards took some)--I never said that there were no Marina stores in Texas, something that has been disproven here, but the topic of the thread--a Hearne supermarket that looked suspiciously like a Marina style building, has been discussed. It was not and was never a Safeway.

A better follow-up question would be "when was it abandoned" but I'm guessing early 1990s or late 1980s.
wnetmacman
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Re: Mini-Marina - Hearne, TX

Post by wnetmacman »

Based on the look and form of the replacement, it could have been the early 90's. Brookshire Brothers was building some very non-distinct stores at that point, and really still are. They really aren't much of a non-conventional-thinking company like their cousin Brookshire Grocery in Tyler. This original store was about as radical as they ever built.
Scott Greer
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