Remodeling An Aldi

Aldi has been on a remodeling spree as of late and the Twin Tiers region is no exception. This particular location sits in front of the soon to be gone local Olean Kmart, so I often found myself taking pictures of both. More on the Kmart closing will come in a special blog post next month. This post has pictures from the remodel in swing, then an imminent temporary shutdown followed by a newly reopened store. Enjoy!

The skeleton of the future facade.

During the remodel, a wooden tunnel was set up and only one set of doors was used.

As you can see, plenty of notice was given for the upcoming closure. Interesting thing is that ended up reopening earlier than expected around August 19th.

Keep this picture in mind for later as this doorway will not be here in the remodeled store. Note how the stockroom doors have been entirely removed.

This area is one of the only areas that saw a major change. More on that later.

Expansion area

A new wooden wall was in place as the store would expand slightly in the front.

Covered expansion area.

Cart area 

Facade in place

And then it closed temporarily....

....and then opened back up.

As you can see here, the restrooms area actually got a sign and there is no longer a door here to the stockroom (that I'm aware of)

Stockroom door was moved to the back wall rather than keeping the corner entrance

And because Kmart is closing at the same time, you wind up with a rather humorous sight:

Modern Remodeled Rite Aid

As I had mentioned in a post last month, it is my intention to try to get most of the decor packages at Rite Aid locations in the Twin Tiers coverage area. Unfortunately, the weather is going the other way in the Great Lakes region, so some designs may or may not get covered. I stepped out on Halloween to visit a few different Rite Aid locations and to my surprise many of them actually have remodeled to this design. I knew some locations had remodeled, but I didn't realize that this many did. The exterior hadn't changed at these locations; something of which was throwing me off.

I was able to locate three different decor packages, though one is left over from Eckerd. Some of these locations I visited were smaller stores so they also had less signage than others. My local Rite Aid is a larger former Eckerd (with more signage than the one I visited) that I too will have to take some pictures of eventually.

This location serving downtown and south Jamestown has the diamond window design with the rare red letters:

 I'll let the pictures do the talking here:

Freezers has a separate roof. Might be original to the store, left over from a design prior or both.

This isn't the newest design seen at brand new locations. Newer ground-up locations feature circle signs. There aren't any brand new Rite Aid locations close to me. Though the closest one to me is in Emporium, PA or Waterloo, NY, winter is not the time of year to be traveling to those areas, especially for Emporium. To see this variant you can check out this picture from Baltimore_Retail's flickr photostream.

More Rite Aid posts to come in the future!