Today (6/26) the Downtown Bellevue Safeway on Bellevue Way will close, and it will re-open across the street Friday morning at the new and improved location in Avalon Meydenbauer. The new location will occupy 55,000 sq ft, which is about 10,000 sq ft larger than Safeway’s normal-sized stores, and just over double the size of their current Downtown Bellevue store.
The new store will become a flagship for the company, highlighting many specialty sections. Safeway, along with the Starbucks inside, will become a favorite of those living in the 368 apartment homes above in the Avalon Meydenbauer community.
The original Downtown Bellevue Safeway store opened in 1963, and at the time was the largest Safeway in Western Washington. A local blog, The Sledgehammer, was able to dig up some great artifacts on the old store, including images from the Bellevue American Newspaper!
Over its 40 years since the first opening, Safeway has gotten only minor cosmetic upgrades, leaving the store very outdated and in desperate need for a complete overhaul; or in this case, a new store all together. Help welcome the new store by making a visit on Friday, or sometime soon after.
Photos courtesy The Sledgehammer
Those are neat pictures!
Crazy how a modern, luxury store can be so worthless in 45 years.
The new Safeway will be there much longer unless real estate gets really crazy.
I just got back from the store, it is fantastic.
I went to see it and.. well, it’s a Safeway!
I just posted my followup to the first post with a number of pictures of the new Safeway for those who are interested. The new post can be found here:
http://thesledgehammer.wordpress.com/2008/07/01/in-with-the-new-a-tour-of-the-new-downtown-bellevue-safeway/
Great follow up images!!!
I took a couple this weekend, and got “busted” for taking pictures, so didn’t continue or bother speaking with the manager to get permission.
The store definitely is big, and the freezer aisle, really is as big as it looks. It’ll take me a while to fully get used to it.
I feel as if the entrance could have been improved a bit. It’s very plain jane.
That’s odd, I had no problem taking pictures. I asked the people handing out samples before I took their pictures, and they seemed more than willing. The only person who even questioned it was one of the checkers. I use a small camera, and generally take pictures without using a flash to avoid drawing too much attention. I also try to minimize the number of random people that get into the pictures as well.