Safeway Sneak Peek

This morning I was able to get a preview tour of the new Southwest Safeway under construction at Waterfront Station. Special thanks go to Craig Muckle and Janice Stubbs from Safeway who gave me the tour. If I could describe the new store in one word it would have to be “WOW!” followed by “Am I really in Southwest?” The differences between the old store and new are like night and day. If you’ve walked by the site on 4th Street, you can get a glimpse of what’s going on inside, but there’s a lot more in store (no pun intended). At about 55,000 square feet, the new urban-lifestyle Safeway is about 20,000 square feet larger than the old store, and some of the new features aren’t even at the Mount Vernon Triangle Safeway (although the new Social Safeway in Georgetown under construction will have similar features to the SW store).

As you walk in the store from the main entrance near the Metro plaza, this area has been dubbed the “food court”, where you can pick up ready-made meals and desserts, like sandwiches, soups, salads, sushi from the sushi bar, rotisserie items, cakes, and pizza (this will be the first Safeway on the East Coast where pizza will be made on the premises btw). The layout of the store is shaped like the letter “J” flipped 90 degrees counterclockwise, so the food court is the curvy part of the “J”. Janice said that the design of the entrance was made to feel more like an elegant restaurant than a grocery store, designed using earth tones, a stone-walled lounge area with a fireplace (another first for an East Coast Safeway), seating, and different styled flooring. Also in the food court is “Cheese World”, which will be attended and will include cheeses from (you guessed it) around the world. There will be three mini cash registers to serve the food court area, so shoppers won’t need to go into the heart of the store if they are just looking for a quick meal to take home. There are several seating areas in this part of the store, as well as a fenced off outdoor seating area to open next year (once the old Safeway is knocked down, which Craig says will be gone by the time the new store opens – I’ll believe it when I see it). A second entrance is located north of the main entrance, close to Starbucks, which also has seating off to the side of the counter for its patrons.

Past the food court is a hearth oven, where European breads will be baked (the old store doesn’t have a bakery). Craig guaranteed that warm bread will be available every day, even after 5pm. For those of you who are picky about how wide you want your loaves cut, a fancy bread slicer (Bizerba) uses lasers to cut the bread up to four different sizes at once right after leaving the oven without crushing the bread.

Cash registers and the customer service desk are located where the “J” bends towards the stem (still follow me?). There are seven full-serve registers and six self-check-out lanes. This area is also where the entrance to the parking garage is located, with two elevators and a staircase leading to 165 parking spaces for Safeway patrons. With an $8 minimum purchase, parking is free for up to 90 minutes.

Next to the check-out lines is the produce department – its placement next to the cash registers is also a first for an East Coast Safeway store. The new store also has a pharmacy, which the other store didn’t have and is located near the produce section. We will now have two pharmacies on the same block, with CVS moving two doors down from Safeway in a couple of months.

Now, the stem part of the “J” shaped store is where you’ll find your typical grocery aisles. There are two aisles in the corner dedicated to wine and beer – also not found in the old store. The larger store format will allow Safeway to provide an expanded amount of products on their shelves, including more international cuisine. At the back of the store is the meat and seafood section, with a service counter. One interesting feature about the service counter is the butcher will marinate your meat or seafood for free using either a dry rub or liquid marinade. The shish kabobs are supposedly very good too.

While I was at the store, several Safeway employees were stocking shelves – many of the aisles looked almost fully stocked with prices already on items. The new Safeway will open for a preview party on April 15th from 4pm-8pm and all items will be 10% off. Regular hours of operation after the 15th will be 6am – 11pm 7 days a week. Countdown to new Safeway opening is 14 days!!!

Scenes from Southwest: Starbucks

Clockwise (from upper left): (1) Ground level of the U.S. Small Business Administration building at the corner of 3rd & D Street. (2) Inside the Capital Gallery building on the 600 block of Maryland Avenue. (3) Ground level of the Phase III building at the Portals on Maryland Avenue. (4) Ground level of the Holiday Inn at the corner of 6th & C Street. A fifth Starbucks will open next year inside Safeway at Waterfront Station.

Packed House at Safeway Town Hall Meeting

There was a spirited debate tonight at the Safeway Town Hall meeting, which lasted three hours with almost every seat filled at Westminster Presbyterian Church. Robert Sockwell, chair of the Southwest Safeway Task Force, moderated the discussion, which included representatives from MPD, Waterfront Associates (the developer of Waterfront Station), and Safeway. Also in attendance at the meeting was Ward 6 Council member Tommy Wells and At-Large Council member Phil Mendelson. The meeting was prompted by Safeway's request for a Class B liquor license, which would allow them to sell beer and wine in the new store. ANC 6D protested the request at their July meeting as a way to negotiate with Safeway over outstanding community concerns regarding the poor condition of the current Safeway and expectations moving forward (in both the current store and the new store opening next year). First up was Lt. Nicholas Gallucci from MPD's 1st District, who went over security concerns at Safeway. He stated that the Southwest area has experienced the second most dramatic reduction in crime in the city over the past couple of years and the area near Safeway is no exception. MPD has been patrolling the Safeway parking lot as of late, as a courtesy, even though they are not responsible for securing private property. Next was David Smith from Waterfront Associates, who mentioned a few new tidbits about phase I of Waterfront Station:

• The West Tower office building will be named 1101 4th Street and the East Tower will be named 1100 4th Street
• 1100 4th Street will open in March 2010
• There will be 8 or 9 retailers in phase I for a total of 85,000 square feet (55,000 SF will be the new Safeway)
• Included in those 8 or 9 retailers will be 3-4 restaurants
• Specific retailers will be announced within the next six weeks or so as tenant agreements are reached
• Other retailers will start moving in around March or April 2010
• The paving of 4th Street should start next month
• 4th Street will open by March 2010, but could possibly reopen before that date
• Vornado will be the property manager and will have an office on-site
• The site of future phases of development will be grassed over until they are ready to be built
• The developer can't get financing right now to redevelop the old EPA towers into residential, so over the next six months, they will dress up the buildings so they don't look like the eyesores they appear to be now

Afterwards, representatives from Safeway described what was being planned for the new Safeway and how community concerns have/will be addressed. Avis Black from Safeway went over the plans for the new lifestyle concept store:

• The new Safeway will be 55,000 SF, nearly double the size of the current store
• It will be modeled after the Mount Vernon Triangle store - photos of which can be found here
• The store will have a bakery with a hearth oven, gelato, prepared sandwiches, a sushi bar, seating areas with a fireplace, a pharmacy, an assortment of gourmet cheeses, and a floral department, among other things
• The store will be shaped like the letter J as opposed to a rectangle
• If the Class B license is approved, the store will sell beer and wine
• The store will include a Starbucks and a Bergmann's drycleaning desk
• There will be five regular registers and eight self-checkout registers
• Public restrooms will be available
• The main entrance to the store will be off 4th Street
• There will be below-grade parking off 4th Street with an elevator and escalator serving the garage that will go directly to Safeway
• The first level in the garage will be dedicated for retail parking
• Parking will be free for 2 hours for Safeway patrons

Tom Harris and Peter Neth from Safeway addressed issues at the current store, including security, proper stocking of items, their rain check policy, cleanliness, and staffing, namely the lack of customer service. After their presentations, the audience had a chance to ask questions of the panelists. A lot of the questions were prefaced by an anecdotal story about a bad experience at Safeway (we all have them don't we?), followed by a demand for action. The Safeway representatives will meet with the task force once a month to go over their progress in addressing these long standing issues. (Above is a rendering of the exterior of 1100 4th Street, with the new Safeway on the ground floor, courtesy of Vornado)

CVS Coming to The Portals

Retail broker Madison Retail Group recently signed a deal with CVS to occupy 10,000 square feet of space at phase three of The Portals complex, which was developed by Republic Properties. CVS will join current retailers Starbucks, Potbelly's, and a pay-by-the-pound food provider once the pharmacy opens this summer. Jennifer Price from Madison tells Southwest...TLQTC that there remains over 20,000 SF of retail space available in the first three phases of The Portals. Included in that total is 10,000 SF of space that was once slated for the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. That theater subsequently decided to locate to Penn Quarter. Price is targeting a sit-down restaurant, a smaller-scale food provider, and eventually a performing arts venue like an Improv for the vacant retail space. Once phase IV and V are built, those office buildings will have an additional 14,000 square feet of ground floor retail. There is a dearth of sit-down restaurants in Southwest, so hopefully Madison can bring one soon to The Portals. Above is a photo of The Portals complex taken from across the Tidal Basin in October 2008 - on the left is the phase III building and the Mandarin Oriental hotel is on the right. Maryland Avenue bisects the site.

Progress at Waterfront Station

Gordon Fraley, the project manager of Waterfront Station, gave a progress report at Monday's SWNA meeting. Currently, the 3rd floor is being poured at the site and the two office buildings should be topped off by February/March of 2009. By next August, the facades will be up at the Shalom Baranes-designed buildings. Both of the buildings will have a terracotta facade, similar to Monument Realty's office building under construction at Half Street - another Shalom Baranes-designed project near Nationals Park. Since the transfer of the 4th & I Street park to the DC Government from NPS occurred a couple weeks ago, the development team can reconnect 4th Street from I Street to M Street. The reconstructed portion of 4th Street will reopen before March 1, 2010, since the street must be reopened before DCRA and the DC Office of Tax & Revenue move into their new office space at Waterfront Station. By May 2010, the new Safeway should be open.

This is a rendering of the new SW Safeway, courtesy of Vornado.

Here's the exterior of the MVT Safeway.

The new SW Safeway may include a Starbucks and a dry cleaners, similar to the MVT Safeway. The SW Safeway Starbucks would be the 5th Starbucks to open in Southwest during the past few years. The other four Starbucks stores are at Capital Gallery (600 Maryland Avenue), The Portals (1201 Maryland Avenue), the Holiday Inn (550 C Street), and the Small Business Administration building at Federal Center SW (409 3rd Street). It would be the first SW store to locate south of the SE-SW Freeway.