Winn-Dixie #2316
624 Barnes Boulevard, Rockledge, FL - Three Meadows Plaza
Last year on AFB, we toured the brand new Rockledge (Viera) Winn-Dixie, which opened in the city's former Earth Fare store. The opening of that new store brings Winn-Dixie back to the Brevard County city of Rockledge after a 16 year hiatus, filling a void in the company's footprint that had existed since the 2005 bankruptcy. Today's post will touch on the history of Winn-Dixie in Rockledge, and take us on a tour of the former 1990's Marketplace store in town.
Long before the city's Marketplace store came into existence, two older Winn-Dixies that dated back to the 1960's served the shoppers of Rockledge. The oldest of those 1960's-era stores was the one featured in the Google Street View image above, located at 213 Dixie Lane. The opening of this Winn-Dixie coincided with the opening of the Searstown Shopping Center across the street, anchored by (obviously) Sears, as well as Publix. The 1961 Winn-Dixie store was built on a small side street at the southern edge of the Searstown complex, the street being a new access road to enter Searstown as well as providing access to the few businesses built along the side of the complex (like the Winn-Dixie). Since Winn-Dixie was the most prominent of the new stores to locate along this new road, the new road ended up getting named after The Beef People's new store, hence the name Dixie Lane (which the road is still called today). Winn-Dixie closed this store by the early 1970's, consolidating their operations in town into a 1968-built store at the corner of Barton and Fiske Boulevards. The history of the 1968 Winn-Dixie is covered in this post over on AFB, as the site of that store has a tie-in with an Albertsons that never came to be. That 1968 store was quite outdated by the mid-1990's, leading it to be replaced by a new Winn-Dixie Marketplace a few miles south in 1995 - the store we'll be looking at in more detail today:
Opening in 1995, the new Winn-Dixie Marketplace store in Rockledge was a fairly average build for the time. The new Marketplace was built at the corner of Barnes Boulevard and Murrell Road, the southernmost edge of Rockledge's city limits. The location at Barnes and Murrell put Winn-Dixie right at the edge of the up-and-coming Viera mega development, a development that would bring thousands of new residents to Central Brevard County. Sadly, by the time Winn-Dixie's 2005 bankruptcy came around, Viera was still in its infancy, and development was only just beginning to boom in the area. With Winn-Dixie in financial trouble, a massive closure wave that included 326 locations was released, the Rockledge location one of the many casualties on the list.
The Rockledge Winn-Dixie Marketplace sat empty until 2008, when the left half of the building was converted into an Aldi. The Rockledge Aldi opened as part of the chain's initial push into Central Florida, an expansion effort that took advantage of the many buildings Winn-Dixie had vacated at the time. While Aldi came along in 2008, it took until 2016 to fill the remaining half of the former Winn-Dixie building. Sky Zone Trampoline Park would be the one to fill the rest of the building, and we'll see a few photos of Sky Zone's side of the building later in the post. Today's post mixes together set of photos I took in 2015 (featuring exterior shots of the building and a close-up of the abandoned half) and a set from 2021 (which profiles the Aldi half of the building in more detail and has some updated exterior photos following Sky Zone's arrival). So yes, quite a bit of change happened in the time between those two photosets, as in addition to Sky Zone moving in, Aldi also did a massive remodel to their half of the building too.
Compared to the previous image (which was part of my 2015 batch), here's what Aldi's exterior looks like today. Like most Aldi stores out there, this one was remodeled to the company's latest design. I really like Aldi's new look, and we'll take a quick peek at that in the following images.
As with most cases of Aldi taking over a piece of a former supermarket building, nothing was left behind from the previous tenant inside. As part of the recent remodel, Aldi added their latest facade design to the exterior too, which looks a bit odd next to the rest of the untouched Winn-Dixie Marketplace facade (photos showing the two designs together coming up later in the post).
On the front sidewalk, that wall in the distance is where Winn-Dixie's entryway used to be.
Stepping inside the Aldi half of the building, you enter into the produce department. You're also greeted by a large sign, and I like how Aldi has been adding the city names to these Welcome signs in the recent remodels.
Entering the produce department, we find a few displays set at an angle. Aldi's typical modern store design features one long produce display as you enter, situated as part of the regular grocery aisles. Aldi's stores that tend to skew a bit larger get the angled produce aisle treatment we see here.
Here's a view from the back of the produce department looking toward the front of the store. To fill up some of the extra space, Aldi placed extra bins of produce at the back of the department for popular items (like bananas) and large produce items (watermelon). Produce also got its own fancy lighting treatment too, with spotlights and fixtures that follow the angled contour of the aisles.
Entering the grocery aisles, it's back to the usual Aldi feel. When the store received its most recent remodel, the decor was swapped out for the much nicer backlit graphics we see here, the aisles were shuffled around a bit, and the ceiling was painted black from its original white (here's a comparison photo from before the remodel). The yellow tile floor is the only remnant from when Aldi first opened here, and was a common design feature in Aldi's older stores. Aldi's new stores use a polished patterned concrete instead of the tile, the polished concrete matching the vibe of the rest of the decor better than the old yellow tiles.
I've always felt that Aldi had the cleanest and most organized stores of the discount grocery chains out there, but Aldi really stepped up their game in these latest stores and remodels. Aldi is expanding like crazy in Florida right now, doing a lot of infill in the Peninsula and embarking on an expansion into the Panhandle. I believe the new image is really helping the company too, as Aldi is actually starting to become a "trendy" place to shop (compared to their old image of being the bare-bones store where all the cheapskates went).
Here's a look across the back of the store, with meats and cheeses in the cases on the back wall.
The last aisle is home to more dairy products, although the aisle expands as it nears the front of the store to allow for a frozen food alcove.
Moving further up that same aisle, here it is with the frozen foods department coming into view.
Our final interior photo from Aldi looks across the store's front end, back toward produce. When Winn-Dixie was here, from this vantage point, we'd have been looking toward the pharmacy (which would have been immediately to my left) and the bakery, which occupied the front left corner where Aldi's entrance is now.
Back outside, here's a look toward the Sky Zone half of the building. Besides removing the awning in the middle of the tower, Sky Zone didn't alter much from the original Marketplace design on the facade.
Before we jump to the present for a closer look at Sky Zone, let's go back in time to 2015, prior to them moving in. Back then, the right side of the building was much more interesting, and contained many more traces from the Winn-Dixie days!
Aldi's portion of the old Winn-Dixie space ends where Winn-Dixie's entryway was. If you were to walk through these doors and look to the left, you'd be greeted immediately by the partition wall.
Looking the other way, we can see that wall through the window from this angle. What we see here was Winn-Dixie's typical Marketplace-era entryway configuration, with the entrance being the double doors on the right side of the vestibule, and the exit being the two doors in the middle. When Sky Zone moved in, they reconfigured the doors to make a single entrance/exit where the two exit doors are located here, and sealed over the old entry door with a new window.
Peeking through the glass, we can see where Winn-Dixie's old salesfloor abruptly ends at the new partition wall installed by Aldi. While Aldi gutted their half of the building at the time, everything was left untouched in the other half, leaving the odd sight of these vents and wires dangling from the ceiling where they were unceremoniously chopped off.
Moving further to the right, we can see some small traces of the Marketplace decor. The check lanes would have been located under the lower ceiling immediately in front of me, the grocery aisles extending out beyond that.
If you look really close at the floor, the old Marketplace tile pattern is still there. While it looks like the old tile floor was ripped out, it wasn't. It appears it was just really dirty, probably covered in a layer of construction dust from when the building was subdivided.
Our last interior photo was taken through the old entry doors, looking toward the former produce department in the front right corner.
A 'DELI' and 'PHARMACY' labelscar was still visible on the far right side of the facade when I visited in 2015...
…and believe it or not, between the new paint and the addition of the silhouettes of jumping people, that same labelscar is still visible today too! The labelscar is really obvious in person, but you can still see it if you zoom in on the photo above.
At the other side of the building now, we can see the odd pairing of the old Winn-Dixie facade with Aldi's new design. This certainly isn't the weirdest facade to come out of a subdivision that I've seen, but it's pretty strange nonetheless!
The repainting of the old Marketplace tower above Sky Zone's entrance to that bright blue color also makes for a strange sight, sticking out from the other neutral colors the building is painted. Painting it blue was better than removing the tower completely though.
While Sky Zone left most of the exterior alone, as you would probably expect, the interior was totally gutted, and no traces of the old Marketplace decor remain inside.
When this Winn-Dixie closed back in 2005, it probably seemed like a long shot that Winn-Dixie would ever return to town. However, jumping ahead 15 years we find ourselves with a renewed Winn-Dixie that has a strong desire to prove itself once again, returning to Rockledge with a new store, and plans to return to more communities they've vacated over the years too. For a long time we were wondering what stores Winn-Dixie would be closing next, but now we find ourselves faced with a new question - where will Winn-Dixie be opening a new store next?! It's crazy how the supermarket scene works in Florida, but like most things in Florida, it's best to not question how we do things down here too much!
Sorry for the long stretch between posts here on MFR my myself, but hopefully I'll get around to bringing more to the blog soon. As usual there's plenty going on over at AFB, so be sure to jump over there next week for our next Floridian supermarket adventure, and be sure to check back on MFR for any new posts from myself and the other contributors too!
So until the next post,
AFB
