More groceries, major eyesore at Southeast Hawthorne Safeway

East facade of Hawthorne Safeway (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Eight years ago the Safeway supermarket chain built an exemplary urban store in downtown Portland. With housing above the store for density (a first for the company), a LEED rating showing its sustainability and a simple, elegant design by GBD Architects, it showed a nationwide corporation with the smarts and nimbleness to not simply build a cookie-cutter store but adapt to Portland.

“We wanted an urban store with a vibrant streetscape,” Safeway public affairs director Bridget Flanagan told me for a Metropolis magazine story back in 2004, “a store that worked for the community.”

Apparently that was a one-time thing, for the new Safeway on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard, whatever new amenities it may have, is a much diferent story.

Living just off Hawthorne Boulevard for the past 14 years, I shopped countless times at the old, circa-1966 Safeway at 2800 SE Hawthorne. Chances are I'll shop there many times in the future.

But when those shopping trips happen, I'll always be holding my nose. There's just no other way to put it: this is one seriously ugly monstrosity of a grocery store.

Hawthorne Safeway (photo by Brian Libby)

This Safeway offers a lot more space and grocery/food offerings. By burying the old front parking lot underground and building a bigger building all the way up to the street, the store is going from about 33,000 square feet to over 55,000. You can be sure the old Safeway never had a sushi bar, but this one does. The old deli counter with fried chicken and stale Chinese food has been replace by a much more expansive offering of prepared foods. The old Starbucks kiosk inside has become a full-fledged Starbucks with seating and even a fireplace.

But even from blocks away, the Safeway feels needlessly oversized for the neighborhood with its prison-like pair of towers bracketing the front edges of the buiding. The building is just a concrete box, yet a neo-historic facade has been affixed to the front with about as much authenticity as an Old West movie town made in Hollywood. For goodness sake, while visiting recently I even encountered one portion of the northern facade in which an awning extended over windowless concrete block (as you can see in the photo at the top of this post).

Theoretically, it's a more urban store because the parking is underground. But it could not feel much more suburban in its bland stylistic ubiquity, especially given how the added density only led to a bigger store, not a mixed-use building with offices or housing above. Admittedly the zoning didn't allow the latter, but that might have led Safeway to build something less outsized from the single-family homes in the surrounding neighborhood. It's as if the company had two small parking spots and parked one huge SUV there.

The store is officially designed by Lake Oswego firm Benner Stange Strange (lead architect) and supported by the Portland office of Bellevue firm Mulvanny G2 (architect of record). But I consider Safeway to be the culprit here, for the Hawthorne Safeway is just another unit in its assembly line of "Lifestyle Stores" being built around the country that feature added prepared foods and earth-toned interiors. It's true there isn't the same feeling of oppressive fluorescent lights, but there's also less natural light coming into the store. How could you in 2012, in Portland - a sustainable capitol and a largely overcast climate - tear down one store and build another with less natural light?

And by the way, this Safeway will not, unlike the one downtown, apply for LEED certification. So you can't even say this ugly duckling possess an inner swan. It's apparently as bloated as it looks.

Safeway exit door at center-front (photo by Brian Libby)

At the front of the store, as with the back entrance of the renovated Fred Meyer just up Hawthorne, wayfinding is a comedy of errors. Just when one reaches a giant set of glass double doors, it becomes apparent this is only the exit. To enter the store via the official entrance can take one on a winding, counter-intuitive path. Who says a wide glass door has to be only an entry or exit point? At the corner of the building's front, just where the architecture leads you to a door, there's a concrete wall. It all makes you feel like a rat in a maze.

It wouldn't have taken Safeway much effort to create a more nuanced design that better fits the Hawthorne district. All they would have had to do was work with the neighborhood and listen to what shoppers want, then to hire a local Portland firm and give them the freedom to truly engage in the act of design: not to simply put lipstick on a pig by affixing neo-historic faux facades to the front of the concrete box but to truly design a store from the inside out and outside in. Chances are the architects at Benner Strange and Mulvanny G2 did as much as they could given Safeways parameters. Just make our spaceship fit the landing pad.

Safeway could easily have looked at Portland and learned from a local chain exploding with growth by doing things the right way: New Seasons Market. Maybe this isn't a direct comparison, for New Seasons caters to higher-income shoppers for whom things like organic produce are a baseline, not a luxury. Yet beyond the groceries or the demographics, New Seasons builds stores teeming with natural light that, in most cases, feel effortlessly urban even without having any housing or offices above their stores. It's all about having designers and clients who listen to the needs of customers and communities.

Interior of Hawthorne Safeway (photos by Brian Libby)

Like I said, I'll probably still shop at the Hawthorne Safeway. The cost of food, even basic items, has increased substantially over the past decade. Safeway, as with chains like Costco or even Fred Meyer, can offer more competitive pricess on most groceries than New Seasons, Zupans or other local higher-end supermarkets. Yet that's no reason the chain had to scrimp on design or act so heavy-handed and distant. Whether it's the company's refusal to sign a neighborhood agreement with residents living near the store or how this Hawthorne Safeway is basically the same as any in its chain, the company is epitomizing the kind of ham-fisted, tone-deaf behavior that has coalesced much of America against giant corporations.

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Comments

[Portlandpreservation.wordpress.com]

Nice post, Brian, about this completely out of scale, faux -urban grocery store. Your comment that you will probably still end up shopping there, is probably exactly what the folks at Safeway recognize. In that respect they're just thumbing their noses at the neighborhood and the city.

[Ken Waineo]

I think this Safeway has significant issues.

The old store was mostly known for poor service in the neighborhood. Then during construction, they did most everything that they could to upset the neighborhood, was unwilling to complete a good neighbor agreement, and then created a monstrosity of a building at the end of the process.

The whole thing was completely tone-deaf and that should be an incredibly dangerous thing to do in the Hawthorne district.

I've never had a great opinion of Safeway, but everything they have done during this process has significantly deteriorated that general opinion. This should cause Safeway significant anxiety as both Fred Meyer and New Seasons have far better shopping experiences, better community relations and (for Fred Meyer) generally better prices. It's just too easy for shoppers like me to avoid Safeway completely and Safeway has given me every excuse to do so.

[Alexander Stange]

It's Benner Stange, not Benner Strange. I'm glad to see you giving the benefit of the doubt to our local architecture firms.

[Taiganaut]

Well, I've been on a one-person boycott of the Hawthorne Safeway for some time now due to extremely poor service and a dismal selection at the old store, plus the fact that corporate for the Portland region sent out anti-Employee Free Choice Act propaganda letters to the HOME ADDRESSES of workers at non-union stores. (I will say that a number of the veteran checkers at the old store are great, the poor service I got was a step or two up the food chain when I had some needs at the customer service "desk." I do really wonder if the suits managed to finally bust the union out of that store now that it's been rebuilt.)

ANYWAY. Yes. I have no reason or desire to go back in there with Fred Meyer just up the street for my corporate clonestore needs. I read without surprise about the refusal to sign the good-neighbor agreement; I also suspect Portland would have wanted to work with Safeway on a zoning variance to allow a mixed-use upper story, given the stated goals of Portland's zoning regulations (and yes I have researched it, my dream is to own a little corner grocery in the neighborhood someday). I'm also disappointed, but unsurprised, that they built a monolithic clone of their suburban stores smack in the middle of this otherwise very charming neighborhood. It's nice the parking is hidden, but the building looks like hell. There's this blank for two blocks on Hawthorne now. I think with some creativity and by working with the city they could have gotten the square footage they wanted and the yuppie makeover they wanted in a much more attractive package with much happier neighbors in what is, after all, a picket-happy neighborhood.

PS, I will walk in the "out" door until the end of time at Freddy's, or until they get their crap together and give up on whatever ridiculous plan they have to make me impulse-buy grapefruits by walking way the hell around when I'm going in for the pharmacy.

[stephen]

I feel your pain Brian. I imagine that the reason that the downtown stores are as nice as they are is due to design review guidelines. The Pearl district store is not too bad either.
It is all about control with these big corporate deals and the management thinks they know what good design is.
Safeway is no alone by any means. Just look around and you will see many corporate stores that all look like suburban tumors in our urban landscape.
As architects, we need to work harder to motivate these companies to strive to make better buildings. Not any easy task.

[RewFer]

It is nice of you not to indict the design firms here, but I think you let them off too easy. Is it possible they did everything they could? Sure. It is also possible that they took a project that gave them no fee to do anything with. By agreeing to such terms they knew they were just going to throw some corporate schlock up there and that is not being a good neighbor and they should be held accountable for that.

I used to work for a firm that did these kinds of projects. There is never any fee for design, but I will say it was my experience that the retail tenant was far more interested in square footage and layout then the aesthetics and if we could prove improvements wouldn't cost more they would go for it. Our local design firms could have done better.

[Fwickafwee]

I live a block from this Safeway and suffered through the construction for the past year. Now that the Safeway Lifestyle remodel is completed I made a genuine effort to like them but it just isn't meant to be. Only open a little over a week and already it is understaffed, out of advertised sale items and one of the cashiers made a racist comment about the Sushi guys who "don't speak no English." (yes I called and reported her.) I asked the produce manager about the towers on either side of the Safeway castle and he said that there's nothing in them, they are just for show.

Whoever designed this store should be embarrassed. If you look really close it is shoddily completed--corners not square, railings not completely painted, the lipstick on a pig reference hit it on the head. The landscaping is atrocious and even calling it landscaping is an overstatement, it's just a bunch of poorly placed abused ground cover over-sprayed with stinky bark mulch.

Anyway, yes Brian, excellent article! I enjoyed reading it. I also liked your insight and observations on the Hawthorne grocery scene.

[Randy Rapaport]

Another microcosmic statement informing late capitalism. It is a mistake from the unconscious architecture to the size of the store. Thank goodness for New Seasons.

[PablosNachos]

God, if they're going to do a cheap design, why not just build a concrete box with lots of front glass, some skylights and have a cool paint scheme like PNCA did with their building? This town is architecturally uninspiring enough as it is without junk like this polluting the streets. Unbelievable.

[william]

As an architect, I agree this building is shameful from all angles. As an architect who did not have to work on a big box projects until this recession hit, I now know that the architect of record has very little design control. I don't know Safeway specifically, but most corporate giants create their prototypes and, unless required by city zoning codes, do not modify them. Those wasteful and inappropriate towers are likely either pieces of the prototype or are "architectural features" added to satisfy the city. It's part of commercial branding strategies that each store would ideally look the same. In my recent experience, many zoning codes have adopted very similar language for requiring glazing, changes in height/roofline, color changes, architectural features, etc. But the prototypes have evolved with an "approved" kit of proto parts to be used to satisfy the codes. Need to break up a long wall?...add this pilaster group. Too much push from the architect of record to modify and the firm likely risks loosing the work altogether.

[David Fischer]

The new safeway on Barbur has the potential to be a monstrosity as well:
http://www.groupmackenzie.com/safeway_barbur

Ground level parking, store on the second level. Great for high density development but not very inviting if you ask me. Rooftop parking might have been a better choice.