Comments

1
Ah, my dear disenfranchised Safeway. The last of the Mansard Roof Safeways in the Seattle area.

Why they would want to leave when they actually have a market for the first time in thirty years in that neighborhood is beyond me. But who can cipher Safeway's ways?

Interesting tidbit: The SeaFirst in the parking lot was originally a Safeway. Please make a note of it.
2
Almost everyone who shops there drives there, so it's not really local. Driving a couple of extra minutes isn't a big deal. It's just laziness upon laziness behind this particular anxiety.
3
@2. Sometimes we walk; sometimes we drive. Depends on how much we buy and whether or not we're in a rush. The store is about 20 minutes walking or 5 minutes driving, and that Safeway is the closet grocery store to us. The ones in Mt. Baker and the RB aren't local or walkable.

The thought that something must be walkable and walked to at all times in order to be local is motherfucking retarded. If you buy more than $100 worth of groceries, then you can't really walk that shit home without a mule. In the Othello and lower Beacon Hill area, that little Safeway is our local spot.
4
Mansard roof? That's what they call it Catalina? I'm always hoping for a sheet of clean ice and enough for two teams under that type of roof.
5
15 years ago everyone was in an uproar because that Safeway had the highest prices in the city... higher than QFC's in nicer neighborhoods I think... and the lowest quality produce - on the selection of products the reporters arbitrarily chose. (Wow, I need an editor)

It's no secret that Safeway is not here for the consumer. I gave up on Safeway 10+ years ago when the manager at the store on 15th (the old one) refused to listen to me when I tried to report a "hobo" shoplifting many, many bottles of red wine [wait.... ECB are you a stinky, old, black man in a trench coat?] and to make it worse this manager raised a fuss that I was leaving a full shopping cart behind that they were going to have to restock....

It is clear that Safeway is the lowest common denominator (now that Albertson's has pretty much left town) for quality vs. prices.

BUT.... it's clear Safeway has their eye on a new space in that area. They have no reason to be spiteful at the expense of profit. They are not going to get anywhere near as much money for that parcel with a no-grocery covenant and they have no reason to include that unless they intend to have a store in the immediate vicinity.

Stop freaking out, shop at better stores, and... where was the Governor today, I don't think she was in the sate, maybe she's taking a position............................

6
@1 ... Mansard Roof? HA! Quonset is more like it. Mansard roofs are beautiful and classy, Safeway's old style is more roller-rink than Mansard.
7
There's a QFC like a half mile to the north.
8
The whole point of this is to get the low rent Safeway shoppers out of South Seattle so they can put up $400,000 per one-bedroom habitrail complexes. Ideally they would move on their own, but starving them to death by getting rid of low cost food is also appealing to Greg Nickles. Beneficiaries will be Dan Savage, who wants the necessary high density to satisfy his...um...'lifestyle'
9
Safeway has traditionally owned its property. They now either keep it or sell it, but their corporate policy is always to force a no-grocery compete clause onto any deal. In the south end of West Seattle, Safeway closed a store in White Center and one in Arbor Heights, both on Roxbury two miles apart. They opened a big store halfway between. But the two sites were vacant for years. Now one is a church. And the other is now a social services center after years of proposals to build a casino there.

Good luck, Safeway is some badass motherfuckers.
10
@5: Safeway has been nothing but spiteful at the expense of profits in Rainier Valley. They only upgraded their other two stores after threat of lawsuits and those are crappy stores compared to any in North or West Seattle. The Rainier Beach Safeway parking lot is a gang hang out and site of muggings. The store refuses to add security and rarely bothers to even call the police. They purchased deed restrictions on almost every other property that could hold a supermarket in the RV and constantly run after Viet Wah and Beacon Red Apple.
11
That was my childhood Safeway. I remember carrying my bag of treats home up that steep ass hill at age 3. Ahh, memories.
12
All indications are that Safeway put in the deed restriction to protect its profits at the Safeway in Rainier Beach and the Safeway north of Columbia City. That is, it does not want any competition. In my opinion, such anti-competitive deed restrictions are a form of privitized zoning and should be illegal.

Those of us who have followed this situation closely have not heard anything about a new Safeway store somewhere else in Rainier Valley. Instead we'd like Safeway to redevelop this site as a mixed-use development, like what Othello Partners is doing on the SE and NE corners of MLK & Othello, with a bigger and better, urban-type Safeway on the ground floor.

If this fails, we'd like Othello Partners or another developer to do the same thing at another site with a different store, such as Trader Joe's. It will probably difficult for Safeway to sell its site now anyway, so we should have some time to work this out.
13
@ #7 - That QFC is over 3 miles to the north.
14
The Safeway on Othello and MLK discriminates against the blind, by refusing to cash checks presented to us by the State of Washington's Department of Services for the Blind, and in doing so they are in violation of the 1990 ADA federal law. Support the disabled, and let Safeway that they are not above the law! Boycott ALL Safeway stores until this matter is resolved.

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