New Safeway Will Take A Year To Build

You'll need to find your ingredients for life elsewhere beginning in June.

Safeway Grocery will be closing for nearly a year as the company upgrades its Millbrae location.

The present store at 525 El Camino Real will be completely demolished, and a new "Podium style" structure will take its place.

Demolition will begin just after Memorial Day, according to Millbrae Community Development Director Farhad Mortazavi. "The present plan is for the store to close June 4," according to Mortazavi. "Building the new store is expected to take approximately one year."

A drawing of the new building, attached to this article, shows the new store will sit on structural pillars, or podiums, with a parking lot underneath. In essence, the new store will sit up in the air, one level above 181 ground-level parking spaces. Currently, 92 parking spots are available.

Now 37,000 square feet, the new store will be 60 percent larger, some 59,000 square feet of red tag specials when complete.

Safeway hopes to make the store a destination location, and will include a coffee stand and bank outlet inside the store.

At least one item will from the present store be be retained. "The wall mosaic will remain," says Mayor Marge Colapietro. "In addition, they've assured us that the downtown construction that will occur will not get in the way of our Labor Day Art and Wine Festival."

The one year closure will mean a loss of an estimated $200,000 in retail tax dollars for the city.

Safeway is projecting a completion date of May 3, 2013. They say it will take two weeks to stock the store, and anticipate a grand opening of the new store May 17, 2013.

Mortazavi says Safeway is in the process of bidding out the contract work right now.

Other nearby stores in San Mateo County include outlets in South San Francisco and in Burlingame.

According to their website, there are 1,702 Safeway stores across the US and Canada. These include 312 Vons stores in Southern California and Nevada, 112 Randalls and Tom Thumb stores in Texas, 37 Genuardi's store in the Philadelphia area, as well as 17 Carrs stores in Alaska.

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