By this time next year Golden food shoppers will be strolling down the aisles of a brand new, 40,000-square foot Safeway store to be located on 17th Street between Jackson and Ford.
Golden Transcript - October 4, 1978
46 Years Ago
In 1978, Golden had recently lost its King Soopers store, and Safeway was strongly hinting that, if they couldn't find a spot for a bigger store, they would leave Golden and build elsewhere. The community was anxious not to lose their only remaining grocery store. Safeway found a new site, five blocks south, but they needed to buy and demolish three single family homes to make way for the new store. Homeowners in the area were uneasy about having a big store moving into their residential neighborhood--particularly those whose homes had been selected for acquisition and demolition.
Eventually, the developers reached a deal with the homeowners, part of which included building each of them a new home elsewhere in the neighborhood.
The October 4, 1978 Golden Transcript interviewed those three homeowners. Two of the homeowners were building new homes next to each other in the 2000 block of Table Drive. The third was former City Manager Arthur Lowther, who lived in a house that his parents had purchased in 1922. ("I can remember riding up and down this block in a little wagon before I was five years old.") He was building a new house on East Street.
The homeowners had mixed feelings about their move. They were sad to leave their houses, but both Jackson and Ford had become increasingly commercial and busy in recent years. "The neighborhood is no longer residential in character," said Lowther.
Miss Helen Fairbanks agreed that the "day and night traffic" was annoying, and looked forward to moving into a new and larger house, but said if she could have, she would have moved her current house to the new lot. "This is one of the oldest houses in Golden," she said.
Miss Rose Hudson, a retired teacher from Golden Junior High, said she would have preferred to stay in her current house until she could no longer garden, then move into a retirement home. She feared, though, that if she didn't make room for Safeway, they would leave town, and she would have to take a bus to Lakewood to do her grocery shopping.
The article includes a photo of both the old and new Lowther houses. His new house is still recognizable, still standing on East Street. Mr. Lowther mentioned that he planned to transplant a few small trees from his current yard to his new one. A large evergreen now stands in front of the house, and I wonder if it was one that he transplanted from his Ford Street house.
Many thanks to an anonymous donor for sponsoring Golden History Moments for the month of October.
