Safeway had a relatively short existence in Iowa. They were gone by 1985, with most of their stores dispersed to local owners and taking on Super Valu branding. But did they leave any artifacts behind? I'm happy to say they did!
4100 University Ave was a quintessential Marina store, opening in the latter half of the 1960s. It now houses a curious thing: A Hy-Vee "Drugstore," which just happens to have a food and liquor selection. I guess Hy-Vee pursued this angle for branding the location because it didn't meet the contemporary footprint threshold for being a "real" Hy-Vee supermarket. It's been false-fronted (blech!), but at least it still exists. I despise Pinterest, but there's a vintage period shot of the store
there!
3200 SW 9th St is a 1970s post-Marina that until recently was still selling groceries as a Save-a-Lot store. The facade and windows are still original, and the mounting points for the "Safeway" lettering are still visible! And that's not all: An identical second store stood at
6300 Hickman until being demolished circa 2010.
1245 Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway corresponds to a scene very much like 5707 Hickman: A narrow, off-model store inherited from Thiftway that nevertheless bears a clear and intact interpretation of the Safeway Marina roofline. The building now houses Polk County Human Services offices, and the address has shifted to
1900 Carpenter.
313 Grand Avenue doesn't fit into the Pylon or Marina orders, and it also looks improbably big by 1950s Safeway standards...so was it rebuilt? The site is currently home to a Fareway supermarket, which is a name that sounds as if it were tailor-made for Safeway conversions.
Des Moines' Merle Hay Mall was originally the Merle Hay Plaza, an open-air shopping centre...and as
this 1959 map proves, it originally featured Safeway as an anchor. Unfortunately, it's been reconfigured severely over the years:
Ross seems to stand on the Safeway site, but I doubt that any part of it is actually the same structure.