1966 Safeway Replacement (Puyallup, Wash.)

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tkaye
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1966 Safeway Replacement (Puyallup, Wash.)

Post by tkaye »

From the October 1966 issue of Safeway News, here's a photo essay detailing the replacement of a classic 1940s store with a Marina. The new store, #422, is still in service -- more than twice as many years as the predecessor building. In the Northwest Safeways thread, someone linked to a couple of current photos of this store.

Many issues of the company's employee newsletter had similar photos of vintage stores being replaced by an adjacent Marina and then demolished. "Outmoded" was a term commonly used to describe the old buildings. The process is very reminiscent of something McDonald's would do a few years later when replacing their original arch buildings with mansard-roofed models.

http://us.a2.yahoofs.com/users/LaitKHbs ... as=puyswy1

http://us.a2.yahoofs.com/users/LaitKHbs ... as=puyswy2

http://us.a2.yahoofs.com/users/LaitKHbs ... as=puyswy3

http://us.a2.yahoofs.com/users/LaitKHbs ... as=puyswy4
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TheStranger
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Post by TheStranger »

Thanks for those great shots!

That is probably one of the shortest-lived units in the chain: 16 years from opening to demolition.

I'm curious: is there an archive of Safeway News back issues somewhere? Reason I bring it up: Chain Store Age's June 1960 edition, page 11 (Checking the Chains section), makes a reference to an issue of Safeway News...
Varying store designs were stressed by Safeway as the company noted some of its most recent openings. The long arched roof style was commented upon as being the trend for most of the newer stores, but an ultra modern zigzag roof at Cupertino, Calif., was also spotlighted. The range from ranch style to colonial American styles and from rough stone exteriors to heavily glassed fronts was dramatized in a new store presentation made by Safeway News.
I know that there's a few late-1950s prototype drawings in the section on Safeway on this site, so it may be that that's being referred to...this blurb does seem to conflict with an earlier CSA Checking the Chains piece earlier in 1960, just the month before (page 13):
In the annual report to stockholders, Safeway president, R.A. Magowan, noted that construction time for a new store from the date of purchase of the land to the opening of the store, has been cut from 21 months to about 11 months over the last four years. At the same time, construction costs were reduced some 18.6% to under $10 per square foot.
Cost reductions were achieved by standardizing on 5 types of stores and by eliminating changes once the design was approved.
the past five years have seen some 783 stores added to the Safeway list - about 63% of the total now operated. In the same period, some 624 smaller stores were closed.
Chris Sampang
tkaye
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Post by tkaye »

TheStranger wrote:That is probably one of the shortest-lived units in the chain: 16 years from opening to demolition.
Thanks for noticing in the caption that it opened in 1950 -- I didn't see that. I had called it a 1940s store just on looks, but now that I've viewed the pictures again knowing it was built in 1950, I do realize that it looks about twice as big as most of the prototypical '40s stores. It still kept the '40s facade, so this must have been sort of a transitional design before the "modern" (i.e. pylon) supermarket.

Actually, some of the "outmoded" stores whose replacements were featured in other articles lasted even less than 16 years. If I recall correctly, most of those were in Canada.

Only three libraries in the country have Safeway News in their collection: the University of Oklahoma, Portland State University, and the University of Oregon. (I'm surprised that no libraries in the Bay Area have it, since it's Safeway's home turf.) I've been using the Portland State library to look at it, but their holdings don't start until 1961, so the article they referenced in Chain Store Age wouldn't be there.
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