YESTERDAY, we discussed Coldwater Creek, a new “rustic luxury” clothes-and-home-furnishings store in downtown Seattle.

Fortunately, though, there are still other firms willing to invest in retail spaces for those of us without software-stock-option moolah.

Case in point: Fred Meyer, a chain with a peculiar history.

Back in ’22, Fred G. Meyer started a little drug-and-variety store in downtown Portland. But the chain’s real beginnings are in 1931, when Meyer expanded on the then-new supermarket concept and built a full-block, self-service general store (food, drugs, variety, clothes, hardware) in east Portland’s Hollywood neighborhood (it remained open until 1991). This was over a decade before the first discount stores opened, and almost three decades before Kmart and Wal-Mart first appeared.

Meyer (a lifelong Rosicrucian) lived to be 92, leaving a circuit of “One Stop Shopping Centers” stretching from Alaska to Utah. The chain was taken over by leveraged-buyout kings Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, who later sold off their stake on the open market. The Meyer company then bought other food and drug chains throughout the west, including Seattle’s QFC, before itself getting acquired by Kroger.

Part of the Freddy’s chain’s strategy has been to construct huge stores in free-standing locations. They didn’t like to share customer traffic with malls, downtown or neighborhood storefront shops, or even strip-mall stores other than the few they rented parts of their own buildings to. They made an exception in the ’80s when developer Ken Alhadeff turned their existing Broadway site in Seattle into the Broadway Market minimall (which included a relatively-small Freddy’s store along with other tenants).

When Freddy’s decided to build another Seattle store, they picked an industrial block in Ballard that had housed a defunct steel mill. The site’s not only almost a quarter-mile from any other large retail establishment, it’s a couple blocks away from major arterial streets (it’s actually closer to the Burke-Gilman bike trail). Advocates of retaining industrial jobs in the area fought the plan for years, until a compromise was reached that allowed Freddy’s to use most but not all of the steel-mill lot.

There, Freddy’s built an all-new structure that looks like a string of old industrial buildings (the same retro-utilitarian look found at Safeco Field). From the outside, it looks like it could’ve been one of those abandoned factories turned into shopping centers. On the inside, though, its newness is evident.

It’s a huge place, yet cleanly laid out. And it has most everything a person or family of less-than-spectacular means might want–except any books more obscure than Harry Potter or any music more indie than Shania Twain. (Even though the new store’s just blocks from the recording studio, now known as John & Stu’s Place, where all those seminal “Seattle Scene” records were made).

Unlike discounters, Freddy’s sells brand-name stuff at fair but not-significantly-lower prices. At the twilight of the mass-market age, Freddy’s is still an almost-everything-for-almost-everyone kind of place. And at the dawn of “e-tailing,” Freddy’s is still building huge tangible stores.

How long the Freddy’s business plan can remain viable is anyone’s guess. But if the new Ballard location doesn’t work out, at least it could be reclaimed for making stuff instead of merely selling stuff.

MONDAY: Getting ready for the big world trade protest-a-thon.

ELSEWHERE:

• Now I understand why Steve Allen’s kid hooked up with a hippie religious cult in the ’70s….
• Some ex-acquaintances of mine ended up working in Boeing PR. This site might be their worst nightmare….
• n Philly, voyeurism finds a new kink in “Other People’s Home Movies….”