Moved from another thread:
I'm still pretty sure that store had another tenant prior to Safeway. My reasoning is that the interior layout (as it sill existed, at least in 2005) is radically different from anything I've ever seen in any other Safeway from any era. There's the central produce area, which Safeway has pretty much never done, and the strange ceiling setup above the checkouts, among other things.TheStranger wrote:As for the Webster Street Safeway, I got an email a few days ago from a former Safeway employee that claimed it was never a Brentwood but a 1980s original Safeway. But I suspect it may have received a new building and address change when Safeway came along.
It pretty much just screams "conversion", sort of like the odd store next to the former White Front in South San Francisco. Plus, the timing is right.
For what it's worth, here's an archived post from the old message board:
My vote is for Farmer's having been in an earlier building on the site. It's in an old urban renewal tract anyway, so there's no telling what sort of transactions are connected to that piece of land. The surrounding highrise buildings were built in 1990, so Farmer's may have actually been where one of them is now; the one at the front of the plot has a more legitimate claim to a Geary Boulevard address anyway.Mayfair was in business at that location for the 1960s up to the early to mid 1970s. The local chain Brentwood Markets took over the space after Mayfair shut down their Bay Area stores (including two locations in San Francisco at the Northpoint Shopping Center at Bay and Mason and at Geary and Webster). I remember the Brentwood name was on a shorter banner that covered the Mayfair sign during the Brentwood's first year of operation there so the sign read "Brentwood-air").
