[TheStranger]

I originally posted this in the LA thread...I've seen this photo quite a few times, of a gable Safeway burning during the 1965 Watts Riots:



Does anyone know where this store was located? I could use Live Local to find out what's on the site now...

EDIT: According to the May 1959 edition of Chain Store Age, page 10h, the third largest store in all of Safeway at the time was in Watts at 1754 Imperial Highway, which may be this gable.

However, I'm not sure whether it's 1754 W Imperial (at Western):
http://tinyurl.com/y85j87

Or 1754 E Imperial:
http://tinyurl.com/y5hyk4

In either case, there looks to be no store there now, so I'm thinking it may have closed shortly after the riots.

[runchadrun]

In an LA Times story from 8/15/1965 it talks about a Safeway at Holmes and Imperial Hwy "all but destroyed by fire." That intersection (if it still existed) would match 1754 E Imperial but it's now underneath the Century Freeway.

I found a story from the 8/8/1981 issue of the LA Times with the author's recollection of the riots, however I don't think it's the above store. She recounts how the Safeway "near Avalon and 103rd" burned down. The Safeway at that intersection opened on 3/22/1951 and was 80 ft wide by 134 ft deep. Based on the grainy picture from the news article announcing the opening it looks to be a pylon design and the picture above is a gable store. There is currently a Superior Warehouse at that intersection, the address is 10211 S. Avalon Blvd. Previously there was a Ralphs at that address.

[Jeff]

Watts is Eastern LA. So that would be East, and under the 105 today, meaning any store that was there would have been torn down in the late 80's for the construction of the 105.

Now looking at the live-local view of the Avalon/103rd spot, why does the north end of the building look sorta-gable like. I wonder if this was a replacement building. It looks like it had a large addition to the south end of the store.

[runchadrun]

I was thinking that there might be a gable also but I bet it's a replacement store. The article annoucing the opening of the Avalon store also announces a store at Vermont and 89th and it says that they are nearly identical. Here's the store on Vermont, which appears to be a church now, and it looks nothing like the current store on Avalon:

http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2& ... ene=889427

[greebs]

LA Public Library has a picture of the 103rd street/Avalon Blvd spot that might be the store in question.

http://catalog1.lapl.org:80/cgi-bin/cw_ ... +39615+2+0

[runchadrun]

Thanks greebs. With the LAPL photo collection you have to link to the actual jpg, not the summary page.

"A bulldozer levels off excavation at new Safeway store site. The new store will be built on this spot at Avalon Boulevard and 103rd Street. Photo dated: October 11, 1965."
http://jpg1.lapl.org/pics34/00036545.jpg

"A National Guard unit moves into the Safeway store at Vernon and Figueroa on August 14, 1965. It was the last supermarket in the general area left standing during the Watts Riot."
http://jpg2.lapl.org/pics30/00049645.jpg
There is now a Rite Aid and a closed Ralphs at that intersection.
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2& ... ene=570640

[Jeff]

The Ralphs is now a Ross Dress for less. I just passed that store yesterday driving down Vernon.

[TheStranger]

Here's something I wasn't expecting to find: a color version of the photo of the Imperial Highway gable on fire:

http://www.usc.edu/libraries/archives/c ... mage2.html

[tkaye]

As an aside to all this, when I was looking through some late '60s issues of Safeway News a few weeks ago, I read a couple of stories that mentioned how hard the chain was hit in the 1968 Washington, D.C. riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King. I don't believe any of the stores was completely destroyed like the Watts store was, however. One of the D.C. stores had opened only weeks earlier and had been the site of a big PR event hailing Safeway's "dedication" to the inner-city.

This made me think about how the wildly differing marketplaces Safeway operated in (and still does to some degree). I'd imagine that if you had a complete store list from the 1960s, the bulk of Safeway's locations would be in rural or suburban towns -- mostly on the West Coast. From a management perspective, I'd have to think that Watts and Washington, D.C. are worlds apart from places like Camas, Wash. and McMinnville, Ore.

[TheStranger]

As an aside to all this, when I was looking through some late '60s issues of Safeway News a few weeks ago, I read a couple of stories that mentioned how hard the chain was hit in the 1968 Washington, D.C. riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King. I don't believe any of the stores was completely destroyed like the Watts store was, however. One of the D.C. stores had opened only weeks earlier and had been the site of a big PR event hailing Safeway's "dedication" to the inner-city.

I think DCGrocery mentions at least one of those stores on his site, it was a Safeway with the yellow lettering, 14th Street I want to say.

This made me think about how the wildly differing marketplaces Safeway operated in (and still does to some degree). I'd imagine that if you had a complete store list from the 1960s, the bulk of Safeway's locations would be in rural or suburban towns -- mostly on the West Coast. From a management perspective, I'd have to think that Watts and Washington, D.C. are worlds apart from places like Camas, Wash. and McMinnville, Ore.

Part of that seems to be the product of where the chain operates: SF and DC are two of the earliest markets Safeway existed in, and both obviously have areas of vast wealth and areas of not-so-nice development. Before the Safeway name entered each town, the pre-existing chains that would ultimately join the company had extreme density in both towns, throughout all neighborhoods, and for the most part that is how Safeway continues to operate in both cities (especially SF).

I would say that's the same for the LA market as well except that Watts wasn't always "inner-city" either, that being more of a post-WW2 development.

Although the first Marina store was designed specifically for a still-very affluent SF neighborhood (which also managed to rebuild relatively quickly after the 1989 quake), Safeway didn't just place marina buildings in the nicest parts of town: the two SF marinas not operated by the chain today, 345 Williams (a busy Foodsco) and 2620 Bayshore, are in the Bayview and Visitacion Valley areas respectively - the former which was already kinda sketchy in the 60s, and the latter which declined rapidly in the early 80s.

Winnipeg is another city that has seen better days, but has several of the best Marina examples out there. DC's "Sixties Safeway" marina is also not in the greatest area, along with some of the older suburban marinas within the Beltway.

Although Safeway's Lifestyle program (and the concepts behind the original Marina store and International) seem to suggest a long-standing desire to go upscale, it is worth nothing - as was mentioned at the very start of this thread - that the Imperial Highway Safeway, the very one that burned in the riots, was once one of the largest stores in the chain.

[rich]

Safeway continued to operate a large number of inner city locations in DC after the riots--they still had dozens of stores in DC in the early 70s. You can see former marinas in a number of DC neighborhoods--one on Rhode Island Ave NW was operating until fairly recently (even though it was a mile away from a store they opened in the late 80s). In general, they consolidated locations over time rather than simply departing neighborhoods and replaced a number of long-running stores with new ones. A marina near Walter Reed was replaced by a "Marketplace" in the early 90s, which was recently upgraded. An older store on Minnesota Avenue was replaced when a new shopping center opened. The 50s store on Columbia Road that recently was pictured here is still operating in a larger size (I was just there a few hours ago). They also operated many small neighborhood stores until well into the 60s and developed small stores in conjunction with office and apartment building projects in promising neighborhhods. The latter stores--mostly in DuPont Circle and the West End were gradually closed during the 90s--only one at 20th & S, NW remains (and its been enlarged in recent years). For awhile, these stores used the "Town House" names and charged ridiculous prices.

One factor in DC has been the departure of competitors. Giant took over two of Grand Union's stores (and eventually closed them), while the others became other kinds of retail. Food Fair's one store in DC that I know of became a drug store. A&Ps stores were small and outmoded and generally did not attract supermarket tenants. A&P was a relative weakling in the DC area, whereas it often had many inner city locations in other cities. Safeway seemed to have a gentleman's agreement with Giant--when they replaced their Alabama-Naylor store in Southeast DC (they took over space that had housed a Sears), Giant closed their small, decades old store nearby. When Safeway enlarged the store on Columbia Road, Giant left and their space was subdivided. Safeway also tends to charge more in their DC stores, regardless of neighborhood than in the suburbs. Giant generally has avoided this.

Safeway does seem to have knack for operating in cities that some other mid-market chains lack. For example, they have, historically, had a flexibility that one doesn't find at Kroger, although both tend to be cautious and defensive in areas like pricing. Kroger never went in for urban renewal projects or prototypes like Safeway International. They were well behind their northern competitors in opening superstores. When Kroger recently opened new stores on its "Signature" prototype in Atlanta, they seemed like laughable attempts at going upscale (and the one near me failed misearble at getting the desired demographic). Kroger apparently didn't learn much from its Ralphs' stores "Fresh Fare" prototypes. OTOH, Safeway has done Kroger-like things in wrecking some of their recent acquistions. The "Lifestyle" prototype seems to be an effort to undo some of that.

[TheStranger]

Going back to the SF example, and comparing it to what rich just posted...

The only neighborhoods that Safeway has abandoned in SF are Bayview and Visitacion Valley, and the 345 Williams marina (in Bayview) has been discussed at length before on this board, with photos up both here at Groceteria and at my site. That place is actually thriving now as Kroger-owned FoodsCo. And speaking of Kroger, their recent plans to sell Cala/Bell highlights just how little competition Safeway has in town now (with Lucky/Albertsons always having had a token presence).

Our humble host has noted that the Bayshore Boulevard store (in Visitacion Valley) probably was consolidated with an updated Mission Street location (the one south of Alemany, not the marina at 30th which I was actually at tonight, and which has just completed a Lifestyle remodel) in the early 80s.

Tying this all back to the original topic...Safeway built the replacement store at Avalon pretty quickly, within about a year of the riots - though I am wondering if this was a consolidation as the way I've interpreted the data so far, it seems like there already was a store in that area, and that got rebuilt, while Imperial was abandoned (and ultimately doomed by the I-105 right of way).

[scanman2]

Yes this loaction was originally a Safeway, a Ralphs, then an independent which I can't remember. It is now Superior #1 (a reuse of #1 after Superior in Covina originally #1 the first time around closed). A second building was built on the site when Ralphs was there and was Thrifty Drug which failed badly due to excessive shoplifting and closed before the Ralphs did. When Superior went in, they cut through the 2 separate walls from each building and made it 1 big building. The LAPD CRASH division was leasing space upstairs above the store for many years for a mere $100/month until the infamous breakup of the LAPD CRASH unit.