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I found an article in the Arkansas Times that confirms that old blue building at 12th and Ceder in Little Rock was a Safeway. The article is about the Police Dept. wanting to make it a substation but in the first paragraph it specifically states the old store was a Safeway. Here is a link to the story:

http://www.arktimes.com/Articles/Articl ... 82aaea3357

I still do not know why Safeway had 2 stores that close together. Here is another view of the building.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source= ... 1,135,,0,5

I'd be willing to bet they did not operate at the same time. Safeway was notorious for replacing stores in some cases with brand new ones almost right next door. If you look through some of the pictures on this site, you'll find that in California, some replacement stores were built in the parking lots of their predecessors. I know of a case in Longview, Texas where a pylon store was replaced with a post-marina store right next door, and both buildings still stand today, and the pylon has reclaimed life as a grocery store.

If you look closely at the google map, the store that the newspaper is discussing is somewhat smaller than the marina Harvest Foods that is still operating up the street. Safeway most likely just moved.

In an additional note, Affiliated Foods Southwest bought the Harvest Foods name. They were going to use it as a growth vehicle for their company, to use a known name for their franchisees. The stores still listed on the Harvest Foods website are company owned. The ones operating, but not listed, are owned by others, but serviced by AFS. AFS has a pretty broad reach, going as far south as Lafayette, LA. (We have at least 5 stores here supplied by them, all Piggly Wigglys.) It is my understanding that they are only using Harvest Foods in Arkansas, however.

I'd be willing to bet they did not operate at the same time. Safeway was notorious for replacing stores in some cases with brand new ones almost right next door


A few days ago, I was going through an old trunk at my Dad's house and ran accross a 1984 SW Bell phone book. I thought, what the heck, I am going to find out at least where all the Safeway's were in 1984 in LR. I looked and found there were 13 stores listed for LR and North Little Rock and only two stores on 12th St. So you where probably right about them not operating at the same time because the store in the middle was long out of business in 1984.

Here's a streetview of Searcy, AR Safeway, operating as the indy Sexton Foods, and its Marina predecessor next door. Searcy has a still operating Kroger Superstore about a mile east of this store:

http://maps.google.com/maps/svpw?url=ht ... l=en&gl=us

I think they meant Weingarten's. They were a Texas (Houston area), Arkansas (Little Rock area), and Louisiana (Shreveport area) chain acquired by Safeway in 1984. You may have heard this story before. Safeway had other stores in Houston, built from the 60's I think into the mid 80's. They, Weingarten's, and Kroger were the major players in Houston back in the day. In 1988, Safeway's Houston stores became the independent AppleTree chain. Most of the stores were divested in 1993. Some of them became major Houston chain Randall's, which is ironically now part of Safeway.

This was a different (later?) prototype Weingarten's: http://www.flickr.com/photos/16441604@N07/4120633523/

Probably not. Weingarten's was long gone from pretty much everywhere but Houston by the time of their sellout. They sold 100+ stores to Grand Union, but only a small portion (only around Houston) were sold to Safeway. The stores outside of Texas were mostly closed. The Arkansas Safeway division was full of Marina stores, which weren't built by Weingarten. Their reach outside Houston was very limited and spotty.

If the pictured store was originally a Weingarten, it was remodeled into a Safeway image, because Safeway had dozens of stores in Dallas that looked just like that.

My mistake, I figured it was a Weingarten's because it looked very old. As I have posted before, there is an abandoned store like that at 249 and Champions Forest. It was last a Kroger. Apparently it was sold to Kroger before the 1993 AppleTree sell-off. The Pearland, TX store looked like that too. It is now Office Depot and Big Lots. Around when was this style Safeway built?