Albertsons Gets Altitude

Picture taken in 2019 by author
Built in 1991 adjacent to the Wal-Mart in its pre-Supercenter days was an Albertsons supermarket (2205 Longmire), the first store of its kind in town (#2702 post-renumbering when it became part of the Houston division, as the Skaggs Alpha Beta also converted). Despite coming in with relatively low prices, thanks to the expansion of H-E-B Pantry and the pre-existing Kroger market, Albertsons would never really thrive in this town, despite beating or tying Kroger for store count of full line stores until 2006.

Albertsons is on the left, Wal-Mart is on the right completing its first expansion.
Despite the fact that it was much closer to my family's house than Kroger or H-E-B Pantry, my family actually never really shopped at Albertsons due to it being more expensive than those two other stores. As my family bought lots of groceries due to a growing family, it was more cost-effective to make the extra miles to H-E-B Pantry (later the full-line H-E-B) or Kroger (the location at Southwest Parkway and Texas Avenue), so it was fairly rare that I even went to it at all.

Around 2002, it remodeled, as the grocery market was heating up around it, probably to compete with the Kroger a mile north of it (an updated, albeit badly, Greenhouse model, and also one that outlasted a Winn-Dixie Marketplace catty-corner to it), and a large (Signature store) Kroger that opened in 2000 a mile south of it (also holding a Longmire address, natch). The décor of Albertsons in its early days wasn't all that memorable (I believe it was the "Blue & Gray" model), but I remember that a large mirror that you ran the length near the checkouts. Apparently it was where the break room and offices were. The remodel also added a Starbucks Coffee kiosk, and if I recall correctly, changed it to the "Marketplace" décor package (see above link) from the "Blue & Gray" model. It should've been surprising that the store remodeled at all (along with adding a third store in Bryan) as all around the same time, Albertsons was selling or closing stores across Texas, pulling the plug on the San Antonio, South Texas, and Houston markets, leaving a just few scattered stores that remained (along with North Texas, Austin, and Dallas-Fort Worth).

A few years after this remodel, it also added a little Sav-on logo to the front, as the chain tried to make an ill-fated attempt to capitalize on the Sav-on name like Jewel-Osco in the mideast (never mind that by that time stand-alone Sav-on drug stores had long vanished from the Texas market).

Seeing as how I don't have interior pictures (a visit less than a year ago had the store gutted entirely down to a shell), I'm going to try to walk through what I remember. Albertsons had two doors on either side, you walked in the alcove, grabbed your cart, and in the right, that was where the bakery and deli sections were, in the back was a fairly long fish counter that always smelled like fish because they couldn't move the product fast enough, on the back left was the dairy and ice cream, and in the front you had the customer service section. I think the produce was on the left side, and the Starbucks was definitely on the right. There was also a video rental place, we went there around 2003-2004. The discs were scratched up and it even had some old N64 (maybe even SNES!) games for rental, but the disc rental was cheap. Later on, this was totally gutted for Texas A&M sports apparel (I think it was in 2005), which would remain until the store's closure in 2008.

The summer 2008 closure seemed to confirm a long-standing rumor that Wal-Mart would buy the store for a Supercenter expansion, and in 2009, part of the store was demolished to make room for a physical expansion. After the Walmart was finished, the exterior walls of the old Albertsons were repainted a different shade of brown to match Walmart's color palette.

Ripping into the old Albertsons, 2009.
Walmart actually uses the back of the former Albertsons for storage and occasional other uses (sometimes the front of the gutted store was used for hiring fairs), and there's even a physical connection to the store's back to the current Walmart.

Post-Walmart expansion
Sometime in late 2016 or early 2017, I noticed that the front of the former Albertsons was being renovated into a new storefront...Altitude Trampoline Park, which would open August 2017. I ended visited the trampoline park with some family members, and created some new memories in a place that had long been vacant. Next to the Albertsons included some smaller stores with blue awnings, also with the 2205 address but suite numbers. These included Western Beverages (changed in 2016 to "WB Liquors & Wine" as part of a chain upgrade) and a few others. According to archives I found, Austin-based ThunderCloud Subs even had a store here at some point in the mid-1990s.

Previously posted on Safeway and Albertsons in Texas with some mild changes and additions.

UPDATE 12-12-2020: Reports are that likely owing to the difficulties of closure from COVID-19, Altitude Trampoline Park has permanently closed. There were also some minor edits made to differentiate the "front" of the former Albertsons (which Altitude used) and the "back" (which Walmart still uses).

Townshire Shopping Center

Bad sign when there's a "Now Open" sign nearly a year after actually opening. (May 2014)

Opening in 1958 (it advertised to even Hearne) with Safeway, Lester's, Hotard Cafeteria, Kelly's Toylane, Stacy's Furniture, Texas State Optical, Woolworth's, the "Laundromart", and Sears, Townshire was one of the first big shopping destinations that started to draw attention away from Downtown Bryan, arguably the first shopping center in Bryan.

The Sears was at a slightly different grade than the rest of Townshire. At only 21,800 square feet, which was rather small (a "B" class store) for Sears, especially since a "full size" Sears was 10 times that size at the time. After Sears moved out, it would become Central Texas Hardware for a while, and eventually facilities for Blinn (which happily vacated it after their new campus in Bryan was built, as by the time that happened, the building was in horrible condition).

Here's the 1964 tenant list from a document about Montgomery Ward's consideration of moving out of downtown:



Lester's pulled out before the downtown Bryan location did, in 1973 when it moved to a stand-alone location.

Safeway probably moved out in 1977 to its later home catty-corner to where Village Foods is now, and eventually to its current home, where it lasted less than 2 years (at best) before becoming AppleTree (and you know the rest), but by that time, Townshire was already beginning its decline, with Manor East Mall and newer strip centers, like Culpepper Plaza and Redmond Terrace. Finally, Post Oak Mall opened, putting all of the Bryan shopping centers in deep decline. By the early 1980s, Townshire was getting cleared out.

Townshire reopened in great fanfare in 2002 by the same developers that built the Rock Prairie Kroger center with a new facade and a completely rebuilt north anchor, when the ratty old Sears/Central Texas Hardware/Blinn building was torn down and replaced with the area's third Albertsons supermarket, joining the two in College Station (that would be the one next to Wal-Mart and the one on University Drive East, both of which I covered) and attempted to give the nearby Kroger and H-E-B Pantry Foods a run for the money. Despite seemingly solidifying the grocery race (at the time it was built, H-E-B, Kroger, and Albertsons all had three stores in the area each), it was an odd choice since at that time. Albertsons was retreating from Houston area (after a short run of less than a decade) and San Antonio, with Waco and Austin (and the breakup of Albertsons Inc.) not more than a few years away (the three stragglers, including the one in College Station, would all close by 2011). For all its fanfare, the new Albertsons at Townshire didn't even last five years, and closed in 2006, becoming one of the shortest-lived grocery stores in town, though not even close to unseating poor Weingarten near Post Oak Mall.

But the new Townshire didn't whither up, despite the loss of its largest tenant. CiCi's and a dollar store (now King Dollar, but not originally) kept trucking, and several service-oriented tenants came in.

Around 2012 or so, the Albertsons gas station reopened as a generic "Tigerland Express" (which also never took down its "now open" banner and remained as such after it closed a few years later), and in the summer of 2013, the new Walmart grocery store finally opened.

Of course, Walmart Neighborhood Market was much more downscale than the Albertsons it replaced, but it was much cheaper and closer to what the neighborhood needed. It didn't hurt H-E-B very much, and Village Foods was having its own problems thanks to some extensive road construction. However, it too had problems. While Village Foods was going through out of business sales, it abruptly shut down as part of a major purge Walmart did with underperforming/high shrink stores.

Even when Walmart injected some new life into the shopping center, the rest of the strip never really picked up traffic and largely remains vacant. A partial tenant list is below, with the address in parentheses.

Albertsons - Albertsons #2796 never lasted long at Townshire (only from 2002 to 2006), but it made a profound impact at it. The store featured the "Grocery Palace" ("Theme Park") decor of Albertsons (though missing the high-end features), an upscale décor package that featured specialty flooring for departments. Details of the store when it was at Townshire can be seen here. Check out my other site's section on Albertsons, though it's still under construction as of this writing. The Walmart kept much of the exterior features of the Albertsons but repainted it. (1901)

AlphaGraphics - Bought out Tops Printing, a local professional printing company that relocated here after the redevelopment (2023). May 2014 picture here. (2023)

Buddy's Home Furnishings - Opened sometime in 2014 or soon before. Can be seen in this picture. (2009)

Burdett & Son Outdoor Adventure Shop - Here in the early 1990s before eventually moving to Redmond Terrace Shopping Center. (2017)

CiCi's Pizza - This replaced the old shopping center's open-air arcade with smaller stores. Can be seen in this picture(2003)

Dollar Tree - A tenant after the re-do, here in 2005 but gone by 2014. (1915)

Domino's Pizza - Here as of 1993. (2015)

Goodwill - Was indeed here in the late 1990s. (1913)

Kelly's Toylane - Moved out in the early 1980s to 404 University Drive East, disappeared by 1989. At one time the only dedicated toy store in town. (2007)

King Dollar - This wasn't here in the big re-do, but the prices have crept upwards since 2014 since the header picture was taken, now up to $1.25 as of this writing. A similar thing was noticed at Houston's 290 store. (1903)

Safeway - You can see the original Safeway building here, though it's been heavily modified (it's on the right) and moved out in the 1970s to a comparatively larger store. The former H-E-B Pantry is behind it, but that's for another post!

Walmart Neighborhood Market - See the main post.

Woolworth - Closed at Townshire prior to 1980 (downtown Bryan one remained open).

World of Books - Here in 1980, the address is unknown (it also had a store at Culpepper Plaza at this time).

I realize that I left out a lot (I'll add others over time) but I wanted to mostly update Townshire as a consistent narrative in this March 2020 update.

Skaggs Albertsons / Skaggs Alpha Beta / Jewel-Osco / Albertsons

January 2011. The Albertsons had been closed for about 13 years by this point.
301 South College Avenue

Rhetorical Question: Why am I re-posting this, when I have had it since 2011?

Originally discussed on the University Square article, the old Albertsons that once anchored the center confused and perplexed many Aggies that have been here over the years, so here's the story. While scanning items for Project HOLD a few summers ago, I found that it opened as a Skaggs-Albertsons, with the center being (apparently named) the Skaggs Shopping Center. This was in 1971. I thought that the Skaggs name was dropped later, but what actually happened was a complicated brand name swap: Skaggs was a drug company, and Albertsons was grocery, so Skaggs Albertsons was a chain that had one of the first now-standard food and drug operations. Here's a picture of a Skaggs Albertsons in Florida. The Skaggs Albertsons would remain until late 1979, at which point Skaggs acquired American Stores, thus renaming itself as American Stores, and turned the store into what many people would know it by: "Skaggs Alpha Beta" in fall 1979.

Now, I do have an ad from that era but it's in such unbelievably low quality (for the microfilms, of course) that I'm ashamed to show it to you. Can it be cleaned up with a photo-editing program? Sure. Will I do it? Probably not, especially given at the rate that pictures are ripped off of here on a high basis without "real" visitors. This isn't other people's faults entirely: the new way that Google Image Search works now is rip the image out of context, which is unfortunate.

The new "American Stores" company continued to manage this store until it rebranded it as Jewel-Osco in 1991. Shortly after, Albertsons came back and bought the entire market off of American Stores (they would later come back and buy the rest of the company), and rebranded the store as Albertsons.

And so from about 1992 to 1997, Albertsons managed a store on the corner of College and University. However, Randalls, an upscale supermarket further down University, sold its store to Albertsons, causing the small supermarket to quickly be abandoned (it closed in November 1997, according to Wikimapia), and it continued stand for nearly another 15 years, longer than it had been any name.

Of course, a vacant building won't last forever, and in 2012, it finally began to come down, with demolition halting for months but continuing about a year later. Not much more than the east wall remains as of this writing.



An ad from the brief Jewel-Osco days. Note the "Special Supplement to The Eagle" to the left.

There's even a shot of a Sunny Delight bottle as I remember it, before they changed it to "Sunny D" (and later "SunnyD"). Tangy Original was called "Florida Style" and "Smooth" was "California Style".
Other shots, taken January 2011...






Regrettably, I couldn't get any of the interior on that shot, or any other time: the windows were painted over, and my one shot of the interiors was kind of messed up by the flash, and while it did capture some of the interior in a blurry configuration that revealed rows of fluorescents and columns, it mostly created a reflection of me, which I didn't like.


Whoa, Albertsons was open 24 hours! Must have been super-convenient, relatively rare (I don't think even H-E-B did when it first opened), and must have been fun to see at night when the bars had closed for the night.


What was left of Albertsons after the first major demo.


The first Christmas at the store.


Albertsons interior. (Official Stalworth Picture)


From The Eagle, shortly after the demo began.
The real fun thing that no one really knows about the store is that there were some real plans to actually reopen the store under the Albertsons name!

From the city's archives. Click for full size.

In May 2000, Albertsons filed plans with the city to reopen the store as Albertsons #2797. This time around, the Albertsons would have gained a fancy "Albertsons University Market" branding and come complete with a Starbucks and "J.A.'s Kitchen", a deli concept (JA stood for Joe Albertson) that Albertsons played around with for a short while in some stores (from what I can tell, it was just the regular deli usually placed in smaller stores or drug stores). The main reason this never happened was probably because of the issues the company was having at the time, trying to integrate American Stores into the company (which it bought) and fighting a losing battle in the main Houston grocery market (which the 27xx series were part of).

Too bad that was never the case, and the site is now a fenced-off grassy area, returned to simply potential.

Crossposted with some edits from Safeway and Albertsons in Texas. Post updated May 2019.

Randall's / Albertsons

The decaying monolith beckons.

If you're reading this article from the archives, this isn't the first blog post (a number of other early articles were removed), but it is the oldest one available.

In the fall of 1991, Randall's Food Markets, based out of Houston, opened a "New Generation" store in College Station at 615 University Drive East, fairly close to the Texas A&M University campus. Until H-E-B began building larger stores in the 2000s, it was the largest grocery store in the county (not like there was much competition) and definitely the largest one in College Station. It had, according to this article featured "a coffee department with a bar and stools, fresh-made juices, pizza from scratch, a full-line floral department, a full-service bank and a one-hour photo shop", and at 80k square feet (the size of the H-E-Bs now), it was a sight to behold. Unfortunately, due to ongoing difficulties with Randalls' financial conditions, in 1997, it was sold along with stores in Pasadena and Round Rock to Albertsons, which renovated and reopened the stores. In College Station at least this resulted in the closure of the University Square store, though as you can see from that page Albertsons at some point realized this to be a mistake and made plans to renovate and reopen that store until financial difficulties scuttled the plan.

By 2011, this was the only Albertsons remaining in town, and it was sold, along with the Kerrville and New Braunfels stores (the latter two remnants of the defunct San Antonio division) to H-E-B, which reopened the Kerrville store but simply closed the other two. While parking was used for A+ Tutoring, it continued to hold a lease on the store for the next decade.

Eventually, H-E-B's lease expired, and plans have been filed to renovate the building into a REI Co-op and Crunch Fitness.

Some of my additional interior photos can be seen at Safeway and Albertsons in Texas.

Over to the west side of the store is 607 University, a small strip center with about four or so stores. Besides Haiku Sushi & Hibachi Grill, which I remembered being here for a long time (don't know when since I never remembered the building as a Randall's), and became Kobe Steak & Sushi much later (around 2012--this new incarnation shut within months). Most of the places here were pretty forgettable: "TGF Precision Haircutters" was another that was later absorbed by A+ Tutoring.

There was a little café in that strip center called Tuscany's that had a several year stand in the 2000s (my records show it closed in early 2008). Proudly proclaiming that it was the only gelato in miles around (a fact) plus offering upscale-ish coffeehouse goods (coffee, tasty-looking bagel chips), it opened around 2004 with being an Internet café a defining feature (that and the gelato). Any number of factors could've caused its closure: it's possible it wasn't favored by students as a place to hang out (if they wanted any students--some places don't), it was hard to see from the road (invisible heading westbound), or maybe just gelato was a novelty that wore off quickly.

A+ Tutoring is here currently, taking two places at the far end. They came in just before "The Martial Arts Studio", which replaced Tuscany's, moved to Homestead Place (the little shopping center on Texas Avenue, near the cemetery, where the library used to be, if you can remember back that far). A+ Tutoring gets really crowded on some nights, taking up a good half of the parking (which is why the owner of A+ ended up buying the property).

The side closest to University Drive East (Ste. 100) is currently GoldStar Barber (opened as Mike's Barber Studio), Anything Bling Boutique from 2015-2017 (roughly). Notably, from 1998 to around 2013, this was Haiku Japanese & Korean Restaurant, though changed names to Kobe Steak & Sushi in its final years. There was also BedzGalore.com in Ste. 106 briefly, I don't remember signage on the building for it but it took up the Albertsons signage on the roadside for a while until it rotted off.

Speaking of signage, Early Bird Cleaners also sub-leased space since 1995 (it was kept through the conversion!) and was accessible from the store itself. This was Crown Cleaners when it opened in 1992. It looks like Early Bird may have closed as early as 2002, but it was definitely shut by the time Albertsons died. Finally, you should see this awesome YouTube video of a Randall's opening in 1992 in Lufkin. While not in College Station, it gives a feel for what it was like, as the décor was almost identical.

UPDATE 02-01-2024: Partially rewritten and updated. Previous updates have been commented out, with some new edits to restore it closer to what it was originally before the outsourcing.
UPDATE 11-02-2024: REI Co-op opens today. [defunct] removed from post.