Thanks to those who pointed out the trailer that’s gone up in the Admiral Safeway parking lot, e-mailing to ask whether it marks the start of construction on the redevelopment, or something else. Safeway’s Sara Corn says the trailer will be the temporary pharmacy – they scrapped the plan to first build the smaller retail building along California on the northwest side of the parking lot, so it could serve as the pharmacy during construction:
The permit for the retail building was not issued per the planned schedule. Since Safeway wants to provide uninterrupted pharmacy service, we couldn’t demolish the store until the retail building was completed and the pharmacy was open. Waiting for this would cause our entire store construction to be delayed and likely pushed out to a 2011 start. For this reason, we decided to run our pharmacy out of a trailer so we can start the construction of the new store as soon as we receive our permits.
As for when construction will start – Corn says there are still a few steps ahead – the site rezone goes to the City Council in June (she expects public notice this week for June 9/23 meetings); no date yet for the alley vacation to be considered, but once that date’s set, she says they’ll have a construction schedule (which would include a date for the closure of the current store). The smaller retail building, she says, will now be built concurrent with the main store; Catalyst Commercial Partners is currently listing its retail spaces for lease. (Here’s our report from the project’s final Design Review Board meeting back in February.)
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