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Safeway plans to tear down its 1500 Solano Ave. store in Albany and replace it with a new store and 40-or-so-units of condominiums—signaling a major shift in the focus of the giant grocery retailer. 

The proposal has received mixed reviews, evoking fears of increased traffic and density among residents who live near the market. 

While residential neighbors expressed almost unanimous opposition during a Nov. 2 meeting with the developer, citing features of congestion and parking woes, nearby merchants welcomed the proposal. 

Executive Director Lisa Bullwinkel of the Solano Avenue Association (SAA), a group that represents merchants along the popular commercial strip, welcomes a revitalized Safeway. 

“I think the plans are great, it will be a good thing for the street,” she said. 

While SAA members haven’t taken a formal position on the project, Bullwinkel said, “They all seemed to think it was a good thing” when she presented an update on the development at the association’s most recent meeting. 

Former Albany Mayor Robert Cheasty, whose law office is just up the street at 1604 Solano Ave., said he has serious reservations about the appropriateness of the project along the popular commercial street. 

“It looks on its face as if it will change the character of the neighborhood significantly, overwhelming the local residents,” he said. “This is no small and compatible project.” 

Neighbors, who met with the developers on Nov. 2, offered almost unanimous opposition, citing the bulk of the proposed structure, traffic congestion and potential impacts on parking. 

The developers 

As currently envisioned, the project will feature the store at ground level, with two floors of housing above and two levels of parking below. 

Safeway spokesperson Jennifer Webber, director of public relations for the chain’s Northern California division, said “Our newest store in San Francisco at the corner of Fourth and King streets was built with housing over ground floor retail,” she said, “and other store in the city was built that way several years ago.” 

The chain built a similar project in Portland in 2003, which featured apartments above and behind the store and parking beneath, and opened a similar store in downtown Sacramento a year later, according to newspaper reports from those cities. 

Asked if the shift to infill development—housing built over commercial uses—was part of shifting development strategy by the chain, Webber said, “it varies according to the site and the community.” 

The chain’s developer for the project is Security Properties Inc. (SPI), a low-profile, privately held, Seattle-based developer with projects in all but 12 of the contiguous 48 states. The company buys, sells and builds affordable and market-rate apartments and condos and, through a subsidiary, is building subdivisions as well. 

John Marasco, SPI’s managing director for development, said the firm built a similar project to their Albany proposal on a nearly identical lot in Seattle two years ago, though the zoning at the Seattle site allows for a taller project. 

“Since then, we are working on a dozen similar projects in Seattle and the Bay Area. Maybe four of them will turn into developments,” Marasco said. 

The store 

“This sudden interest in development may be the result of Safeway’s failure to keep up with the competition,” Cheasty said. 

“Andronico’s is doing fine, and so is Whole Foods. If you go to Trader Joe’s in El Cerrito on a Saturday you can barely squeeze a cart through the aisles. But it’s not that way at Safeway. 

“They could do a better job with organic produce and other commodities that appeal to the community’s health-conscious shoppers. Maybe before they go into development, Safeway should look first at its core business.”  

For the most part, Bullwinkel agrees with Cheasty’s critique of the existing store. 

“That store was built in the 1960s, and everything else in the area has been upgraded. The competition’s getting stiff, and they really need an extreme makeover,” she said. 

Marasco agrees. “It’s obvious the store has been let go. There are so many things they could do to improve the current situation. 

The new store will be markedly different from the existing facility, she said, complete with an in-store restaurant and other amenities. 

Unlike the existing store, which is set well back from the street by a large parking lot, the new design will bring the store right up to the sidewalk, a move Bullwinkel praises. 

“It brings life to the street instead of all that dead parking space,” she said. 

But that street-level parking may be missed by neighboring retailers, Bullwinkel acknowledges. “Safeway has been very gracious in allowing customers of other merchants to use their lot,” she said, “and we hope they’ll continue to be.”  

Uncertain future 

Marsaco, whose firm Safeway approached to develop the project, acknowledges that serious obstacles remain. 

“We didn’t get the warmest of receptions,” he said of the neighborhood meeting. “The neighbors, for a variety of reason, say that Safeway doesn’t meet their needs—and most of the criticisms we heard were about Safeway. But they also don’t want any more development on the street. It wasn’t a question of the quality of the residential units. They didn’t want anything at all.” 

Marasco said his firm has a good history of working with neighbors, and he feels their proposal to add townhomes along the rear of the lot should ease a lot of the concerns that neighbors have about crime in the existing alleyway that would be closed should the project win approval. 

But Cheasty and other opponents are organizing and developing a wide range of issues to challenge the project. 

As one example, Cheasty cites health risks that could accompany putting parking underground to replace the lot sacrificed to the development because of the mold that could result in an area rich with underground springs.  

Marasco notes that plans are anything but complete. The initial proposal calls for a C-shaped development, built around a courtyard at the center rear of the site. But the number of housing units is undecided. 

“While it could range between 40 and a maximum of 60, it will very likely be less than 40,” to provide a reduced number of higher-priced condos to help ease concerns of neighbors. 

“We do specialized niche development, one-off projects that reflect the needs and concerns of the neighborhood as well as our own,” he said.t