I mentioned in the previous post two special features that I found in my Mid-South Retail Blog inbox recently from my pal Albertsons Florida Blog. Well, today I'm happy to share with you the first of the pair!
You might remember an essay I posted last summer, "The Aftermath of Seessel's." If you follow me on flickr, you'll recall that concurrently, I uploaded an album of photos investigating Albertsons's presence in the state of Mississippi. (You can view either of those items by clicking on the attached links.) The Seessel's story has been well-documented over the years, but there seemed to be very little information available on Albertsons's other Mid-South endeavors. From what info I could find, I discovered that Albertsons had a minimal presence in Mississippi, entering the state in 1997, peaking at ten stores, and exiting not long after in 2002 (when they also left the entire Mid-South region).
Albertsons Florida Blog was very kind to surprise me with a detailed spreadsheet of the Albertsons stores in Mississippi, complete with store numbers and operating divisions (which I did not find in my original research). It is his and my hope that this table will serve as a valuable, accurate, and composite resource for anyone interested in Albertsons's history in Mississippi, whether they are former employees of the stores or just fans of retail. If you have any additional information, memories, or other comments regarding these stores that you'd like to share, please feel free to leave them in the designated area below this post!
And now, without further ado, here is the table! After much trial and error (in which I attempted to present the table both in HTML code form and as an embedded PDF), AFB has gratefully offered to go ahead and host the table over on his blog, with access reserved to readers of the MSRB via an exclusive link. So in other words, please click this link to access the table! I've also uploaded it as a screenshot, albeit with lower visibility, below; clicking on the photo (or right-clicking and selecting "view image," if you're on a mobile device) will allow you to enlarge it.
Albertsons Florida Blog is no stranger to compiling such tables; you can view his list of Albertsons stores in Florida (alongside other spreadsheets) here on his blog. The table above is almost entirely his work (as someone who has never been to the Mid-South, no less!), with only a few edits of my own added in, namely the current tenants and opening and closing dates. You can also find additional information (in paragraph form) individualized to each store at the links to my flickr account that AFB included in the notes column, which you can access individually at AFB's table page linked above (or, alternatively, you can access all ten of those photos via my album link earlier in this post).
I also thought it would be a good idea to direct you to images of how each of the ten stores look today, so clicking each of the links below will take you to a Google Street View capture of that location. Unfortunately, none of the Street Views extend back far enough to the respective stores' Albertsons days, but they're better than nothing!
Gulfport -- Hattiesburg -- South Jackson (Terry Road) -- Ridgeland -- North Jackson (Ridgewood Road) -- Brandon -- Southaven (Stateline Road; originally opened in 1975 as Safeway) -- Southaven (Goodman Road; originally opened in the early 1990s as Seessel's) -- Tupelo -- Horn Lake
Before the post is over, I'd like to sneak in this quick photo that I found in an old LoopNet listing...
...an aerial view of the old Hattiesburg location (top right area, with the white roof), what I believe to be the only picture in existence (on the internet, anyway) of an Albertsons store in operation in Mississippi! If you're viewing this table and have any photos of your own to share of operating Albertsons stores in Mississippi, whether of the exterior or interior, please feel free to send them to midsouthretailblog [at] gmail [dot] com along with any additional information about them (such as which store they are from, or even a complete post if you wish) as well as how you would like to be credited, and I will happily post them here on the blog.
A very big thank you is in order to Albertsons Florida Blog for this awesome reference table! I am proud to be able to host such a resource here on the Mid-South Retail Blog, and am even more excited to share with you sometime later this summer the second of the two surprises that AFB contributed for us. Be sure to check back soon for that post, and as always, have fun exploring the retail world wherever you are!
Retail Retell
