So when we last left off with the market drama in Highland Park, several chains were supposedly competing to land the spot at Avenue 43 and Figueroa. Readers from the area were irate. They wanted a Whole Foods or a Bristol Farms or something that served the area's wealthy hill dwellers and burgeoning hipster, artsy community. Unfortunately, those two stores will not be occupying the former Albertson's site. Instead, H. Park is set to welcome Northeast LA's first Superior Super Warehouse. "Superior, what?" we said, not being life-long Angelenos. Apparently, Superior is the "largest independently-owned chain of grocery supercenters" in SoCal. Superior will occupy the former Albertson's building, which it turns out is an architecturally significant building. Got that? The building was designed by noted supermarket and model ship builder Ronald M. Cleveland. So anyways, a poster to the LottaLiving Forum attended the Feb 28th meeting of the Highland Park Historical Preservation Overlay Zone committee and reports back about Superior's plans for the site:
I went to the Highland Park HPOZ meeting tonight, Feb. 28. Representatives from Superior Super Warehouse and their architect were present, and showed renderings and plans of what the intend to do with the store. The plans they showed called for maintaining the hexagonal shapes on the roof, and in fact they were planning to add three more to the left side and one more to the right side. The HPOZ board opposed this change. Also, they were planning to wall over (or at least, make opaque) much of the glass on the front of the store. This also met with opposition. They were instructed to come back to the next meeting with revised plans and material samples. The signage would be a neon "Superior" on a wireframe on the roof of the store, above the hexagon border (they showed a picture of the Highland Theatre and said it would be structured something like that.) So the question of which grocery store will go in has been answered. Now we just wait to see what it will look like.
· Albertson's in Highland Park threatened [Lotta Living Forum]