Groceteria.com

Eeh, this doesn't seem to fit anywhere else...but...

When I was home this past week for the holidays, I drove by the place where I had my first job: the Cub Foods on Johnson Ferry Road in Atlanta (East Cobb), Georgia. Sadly, this store, like the other Cubs in Atlanta, is no longer open.

However, the building -- still intact, and unchanged save for the signage -- is now used as a YMCA, which I think is a fairly interesting transformation.

So -- have any stores near you undergone such transformations? Now, I'm not talking about swapping a Kroger for a Goodwill store (not to bash either one of them -- just what came to mind), but rather going from a grocery store to something non-retail.

Matt

In Oakland, MD (a little town nearby here), a Food Lion that closed a year ago (since Wal-Mart Supercenter built right behind it), is going to be used as a corporate call center for First United Bank.

In Lafayette, LA, there is a former Price-Lo that is currently 4 nightclubs in one called Graham Central Station. They subdivided the store so that if you enter through the main entrance, you can choose from all 4.

As a young kid, I remember a Safeway in West LA on Venice Blvd just east of Overland, between Keystone and Mentone. It was the type of building with the barrel roof (not a Marina, though) and a big tall sign, like the logo for the message board you see in the upper left. The Safeway closed and became a Carpeteria carpet store. Then it became "Baptist Temple." This would have all happened in the late 1970's. It was Baptist Temple for several years. I don't know when the building was demolished, but the land is now owned by UCLA for off-campus apartments.

As was mentioned in another posting in the forum, there's a former grocery store at Valley Plaza in North Hollywood that is now a movie theater.

In the Fox Hills area of Culver City there was a store that was a Boys Market and was briefly a Ralphs before closing and becoming an independent market. (I lived up the street from it for 2 years and it was a dump. I only went there when I needed one or two things really bad.) Anyway, it's now the customer service center for Comcast Cable.

There is a grocery store in my town in Yukon, Oklahoma that used to be a Food Lion before the Food Lion Chain pulled out of Oklahoma. It.s now the town library and also there is an adult center that trains handicapped and other adults with disabilities so that they can be trained to work in certain occupations which will offer them employment. It's a good use for the store.

I know of another city library...The Beaverton (Oregon) City Library was housed in an old Albertson's building for years until they built the new library in, oh, 2000 or so.

The exterior was largely left intact, though the interior was divided into several rooms and offices and was completely unrecognizable as a grocery store.

And an old Albertson's in Grand Forks, North Dakota has been converted into an administrative center for a bank. They've added on to that building and made some exterior modifications, but you can still see the Albertson's design trademarks if you're familiar with their 80's builds.

In Glendale, AZ there is a former Gemco on W. Thunderbird Road that was converted to the SW accounting center for American Stores' Osco/Savon unit, and is now an acctg. facility for all of Albertson's SW operations. Glendale also has two other unique conversions - a former pylon-style 50s era Safeway is now Ceretta's Candy Co., and a former 50s era Bashas' (with a pylon!-Bashas' copied Safeway design at a number of its stores) converted to Glendale city offices. Both are on the same street (Glendale Av) several blocks apart!

Would turning supermarkets into fitness clubs count? If so, I know a former Kroger that is now a Golds Gym in Macon Georgia. And a Grand Union in Wilton Manors Florida (where I worked briefly in the 80's) was subdivided into a fitness club and one of several gay nightclubs in the area. The neighborhood had become the gay center of Ft. Lauderdale in the 90's.

Also in South Florida, a former Winn-Dixie that was behind city hall in Pompano Beach is now a school. The original front building shape from the WD store was squared off at the top but the entrances to the building are in the same form as when it was a Winn Dixie.

And I remember a 1940's art deco style Publix Market in downtown Lakeland Florida that was turned into a car dealership. It was an unusual but a cool appearance for a Nissan dealership. I haven't been to Lakeland in years. And I am sure that like most car dealers, they probably moved to a larger location outside of town.

In Pomona, a former Giant / Ralphs store is now home to an elementary school.

Hi guys...

I've moved the (very interesting) Wilton manors branch of this discussion into a new topic within a more appropriate forum. Please feel free to continue it at its new location:

http://www.groceteria.com/board/viewtopic.php?t=103

The former Kroger in Macon Georgia I mentioned in a previous post that is now a Golds Gym.

This Kroger was closed in the late 1980's and moved a couple miles north.

In Boise, Idaho, a former Buttrey Food and Drug store is now the home of KBCI Channel 2, a CBS affiliate. Buttrey sold their Boise stores to Albertsons in the mid-80s, this particular location was only a few blocks from 16th and State Street where Albertsons built a new store in the early 80s on the site of their first store.

theres an old safeway in highland park ca that's now a biglots!

Some of Big Lots' Pittsburgh area locations are former Kroger stores. The store in Latrobe is a superstore (and it used to be extremely obvious), the Somerset store soon to close is a nice greenhouse (the labelscars of the ovals are still there).

Of course, Kroger left Pittsburgh in 1985 due to stiff competition from Giant Eagle, which their histories intertwine in Pittsburgh. The original Giant Eagle chain was bought by Kroger in the late 30's giving them their presence there, and after a 5 year no-competition clause, Giant Eagle re-opened, and that Giant Eagle knocked the old Giant Eagle (Kroger) out of the area for good. Of course, there have been rumors for years about Giant Eagle being bought by Kroger.

Besides becoming other types of retail stores I have seen many a bank, old theater and mid sixties style stores turned into churches. Also Tara Hills Center has whole old grocery store and mall adjacent turned into a religious grade school. Gyms also seems to be where old groceries were.