Fred Meyer renews interior
It’s more than just a coat of paint, it’s practically a whole new store.
At least that’s how Steve Valentine, store director of the Fred Meyer at Sullivan Road and Sprague Avenue sees it.
“The shell is still there but everything inside is brand new,” Valentine said while strolling through the store’s new brightly lit aisles. “We looked at our market area and decided we needed to revitalize and remodel.”
Muted tan colors adorn floor tiles and walls, a new color theme that extends even to the shelves and the checkstands. Brighter lights and lower shelving make it easy to see from one end of the store to the other.
“When a store gets 20 to 12 years old, they make sure the fixtures are updated,” Valentine said. The $3 million remodel took place during the holiday season, and store officials were surprised to see no loss in sales while products and walls were moved around.
Nearly all departments saw a facelift.
In the grocery area, a new sushi bar serves fresh fish, and a gourmet pastry section serves luxurious-looking tarts and cakes. The natural foods section is expanded, as is the beef selection, the produce area, the service deli and the frozen cakes. There’s even a new gourmet cheese island.
The garden center’s space was doubled, making it the largest among all the Fred Meyer stores. Customers can pick up Starbucks lattes while they shop. A full-time wine steward can help pick out wines to match dinners.
For the Fred Meyer store, the key is helping shoppers, and that’s what sets them apart from the competition, only a few blocks to the north.
“Customer service is important, that’s what we really hang our hat on,” Valentine said. “Wal-Mart is competition, but really Wal-Mart doesn’t affect us.”
The improvements stretch even as far as the water closet.
“The tile we have in our bathrooms is a lot better than the tile in my own house,” Valentine said.
The store will hold grand opening events throughout the next few weeks.
Two turtle doves …
There’s a lot of racket coming from Utopia Home Accents in the Spokane Valley Mall, but usually only during mating season.
A pair of doves have been delighting visitors to the home decorations store since October, when bird owner and Utopia assistant manager Samantha Clanton brought them to the store in a gigantic cage.
“They don’t mind kids or people tapping on the glass,” Clanton said. “They’re pretty easygoing.”
The two mostly-white doves are big hits among mall-walkers and children, she said.
Last summer, Clanton found one of the doves outside in her front yard. She bought another dove to coax it in to the house, and it’s been bird magic ever since.
About once a month, an egg will hatch, and a tiny dove will enter the world. The little doves are given away to interested customers for free, Clanton said.
The birds are usually quiet, and when the female is sitting on the egg, the male will look down from a perch at the top of the cage and coo softly at the mother.
The birds will be on display until next summer when the weather warms up and they go back to Clanton’s house.