Remodeled Safeway to Debut on Arlington Road Thursday

You may have a tough time recognizing the Arlington Road Safeway store when it reopens this week. It’s zoomed from 1956 to 2011 in the blink of the eye—the 14 months it took to completely renovate and modernize the place.

Long a fixture at the corner of Arlington Road and Bradley Boulevard, it’s seen a sweeping transformation over the past year, remodeled from a 1950s-style Safeway into one of the most modern, energy-efficient retail outlets in the nation, according to company officials.

Patch toured the new store last week, where this long-time customer received considerable education on environmental and recycling practices at the new store as well as a preview on the many new features customers can expect starting this week.

The new Arlington Road Safeway will be the third of the chain’s stores nationwide to qualify for the LEED certification and the first in Montgomery County. The other two are in Santa Cruz, Calif., and the nearby ‘Social Safeway’ on Wisconsin Ave. in Georgetown which reopened last year.

At 48,000 square feet, it’s nearly twice the size of the old store. It sits directly on the streets built in the old parking lots, creating what the company calls “a more urban, pedestrian-friendly environment and attractive storefront.” There will be plenty of underground parking and additional spaces outside in the back.    

For the shopper, here are some of the highlights:

• A specialty cheese department with a “cheese expert” and an olive bar.

• An upgraded Starbucks coffee bar with both an indoor café and outside seating area.

• A Bergmann’s Dry Cleaners inside the store.

• A full-service bakery with an open hearth oven where European-style artisan breads baked daily.   

On the environmental front, the new store will be one of the first retail supermarkets on the East Coast to use composting in a major way, store representatives said.

“We’re an innovator in composting and recycling,” said Ed Wilson, director of industrial engineering at Safeway. “With the addition of organic composting, we are diverting about 85 percent of our waste from local landfills."

Items being recycled include all cardboard, plastic bags, paper, wood, fat, bone and grease.

In addition, the renovated Safeway will see huge savings in energy costs through use of new technology in the refrigeration units which will use considerably less copper tubing and also far fewer refrigerants.

The Arlington Road Safeway also features white TPO roofing which utilizes white roofing membrane, decreasing the cooling requirements for the store. For more details on the store’s numerous environmental features, click here (link to Safeway release headlined Maryland’s greenest store)

Festivities surrounding the store’s re-opening start Wednesday with an invitation only “Soiree’ celebrating the "Art of Safeway," focusing on the new glass windows made by glassmaker Erwin Timmers, co-director of the Washington Glass Studio in Mt. Rainier.

Timmers fashioned artwork out of used materials from the demolished store, fashioning them into eye-catching window panels visible on both the Arlington Road and Bradley Boulevard sides of the new store.

The grand opening and ribbon cutting ceremonies will be held Thursday morning. The store officially opens Thursday at 8 a.m.