Groceteria.com

I just noticed the diamond-shaped pylon sign for the H-E-B at 28520 Tomball Parkway in Tomball Texas, signaling it was once a Safeway. The current building is a replacement that was built by H-E-B a few years back, even though the Safeway was heavily remodeled by H-E-B in the first place. Thing is, I saw a list of AppleTree locations from when they went bankrupt in 1993, and this was not on it. Two Safeways in North Houston were also missing. Would these stores have ever become AppleTree? Or was there an earlier round of AppleTree closings? Would they have closed up as Safeway?

There were multiple rounds of Apple Tree closings. They didn't just die overnight; it was a slow, painful death. It started from an outer ring of stores first, like Nacogdoches, Jacksonville and Lufkin, and worked its way inward to Houston.

In looking at http://www.historicaerials.com, the new HEB was built between 2002 and 2004. The old Safeway shows up on the 2004 map, but on http://www.live.com/maps, it's not there any more; it's the dark area of the parking lot.