Rendering for new Big Saver at 7th St. and Junipero Ave. 

Recently, the Post shared a story of successful collaborative design process between a developer team, City Planning staff and the community in the redevelopment of commercial center for a new Big Saver Foods Market in the Rose Park neighborhood.  

The commercial center was anchored by a 1960’s-era mid-century modern-style grocery store that through the past half-century had traded tenants until the most recent, Big Lots, vacated for the incoming business. Based on the history of the Big Saver emergence in Long Beach, the results could have been quite different on 7th Street and Junipero Avenue.

While certain parts of Long Beach are flush with options for markets (2nd Street and Pacific Coast Highway has Trader Joes, Whole Foods, two Ralphs, Vons and a new Gelsons), others–like central, west and north Long Beach–lack sufficient access to fresh groceries. Though mainstream grocers like Vons, Ralphs and Albertsons have gradually extracted themselves from older portions of the City over the past three or four decades, discount and ethnic chains like Superior, Northgate and Big Saver Foods have begun inserting themselves in the vacuum. While these communities don’t maintain households with the disposable incomes of Bixby Knolls and Belmont Shore, they can make up for it in total volume of consumers through the density of those other neighborhoods.

Just four years ago Big Saver Foods was developing a location in North Long Beach at 1313 East Artesia Boulevard. The addition of any full-service grocer was welcome and the Long Beach Redevelopment Agency flushed the company with tax incentives to help subsidize its new location. The bar appears to have been fairly low for architecture at the time, as the new market had very little design quality and could have been located in South Gate or Brea or Reseda or Akron, Ohio. The basic stucco shell with arches, unidentifiable architectural features and familiar trellis are a potpourri of generic architectural details that were never placed together before the advent of commercial-center design.

The Big Saver on Artesia Blvd. Photos by Brian Ulaszewski.

The Big Saver Foods on Artesia Boulevard has served its purpose, providing reliable, cost-conscious groceries for North Long Beach residents. The company has been a cooperative community partner as it supports many grassroots initiatives and school programs in the area, but the primary issues are related to the properties architecture and urban design which tend to be under-appreciated.

The store’s suburban format does not reinforce the pedestrian-oriented business district outlined in Long Beach’s planning documents (based on the latest draft of the Mobility Element update) or adjacent commercial development. Instead, it is oriented to traffic coming on and off the 91 Freeway. The property is fairly well-landscaped, disguising the draft architecture and masking the blank walls oriented to the sidewalk and street. This is not to say that other recent developments along that portion of Artesia Boulevard do anything to contribute to the goal of creating a walkable area between a relatively new large car wash and massive fire station current under-construction (something of the scale of the Belmont Shore fire station on 2nd Street would have fit well though).

Alternatively, the Big Savers Food in West Long Beach at 1500 West Willow Street architecturally inspires though reflects the suburban format of its original 1960’s-era development. The Central Project Area of Long Beach’s Redevelopment Agency supported the redevelopment of this under-performing commercial property including a significant façade renovation of the fifty year-old mid-century modern anchor building for the Big Saver. Similarly, this grocer begins to address significant need for a full-service grocer in West Long Beach, though there is a strong argument for the necessity of another for this community of over 30,000 residents.

Local architecture firm, Fernald Design was responsible for this sensitive façade update that respects the original exterior architecture while incorporating new features that show fresh life. The façade improvement encompassed the entire property, though there was little that could be done to resolve similar suburban commercial development site planning, as the entirety of the commercial structures remain set back behind a half-block of parking. Some mature trees on the adjacent neighborhood streets and new landscaping in the parking lot attempts to resolve soften the acres of asphalt parking lot.

The Big Saver on West Willow. 

Similar to the West Long Beach location, the new Big Saver Foods, to be located 2290 East 7th Street, will occupy a mid-century modern-style building of twenty-five thousand square feet. While the corridor has a Fresh N Easy a few blocks to the west, the new market could help fill the hole left when the Albertsons market left the location at 6th Street and Redondo Avenue late last year. Neither of these nor the Ralph’s and Top Valu markets a mile away are large enough to be considered a full-service grocer, but the community is fairly well-served with fresh produce and home essentials.

According the local neighborhood newsletter, the redesign for the 7th Street commercial center went through three design iterations. The initial design was quite similarly generic as the North Long Beach Super Saver with heavy use of cement plaster and nondescript contextually irrelevant design details. After meeting stiff resistance from the community and City staff, the design team of Peltrossi & Associates decided to attempt to design a caricature of the historic neighborhood surrounding the site with faux-Craftsman details and clapboard siding, very reminiscent of the Whole Foods on Pacific Coast Highway, near the marina.

Quite surprisingly, the community along with City staff pushed back with a simple request to respect the architecture of the existing structure that incorporates new elements that are in harmony with the surrounding architecture. Rising to the challenge, the architect responded with a design that decidedly retains the swooping roof form of the existing structure and significant north facing glass façade, augmenting it with nature wood paneling and stone accents, especially around the new portion of the structure that will house a Wells Fargo Bank. All participants from the developer, grocer and design to the Planning staff, Council District and neighborhood stakeholders should be proud of the design to this point, though final judgment is reserved until completion.

While the project struggles with similar urban design issues associated with the large suburban-style parking lots that cut if off from all adjacent sidewalks (and thus pedestrians), the design aesthetic is better than any other grocery store in Long Beach, save its sister store on the Westside. It is architecturally richer than the renderings of the new Gelsons at 2nd Street and Pacific Coast Highway, sleeker than the new downtown Vons (built on the site of a similar 60’s era mid-century modern structure) and is something that can set a tone for an emerging East 7th Street Corridor.

Big Saver Foods provided quality architecture for two of three neighborhoods in Long Beach, which could be a circumstance of the existing material, political forces or economic conditions. Further research should go into the winning formula for future grocery store development in Long Beach.

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