The Specialists

The CSNews Store Design Contest honors four retailers with four different specialties

A part from the overall design aesthetic of a convenience store, there are often individual features that particularly stand out from the rest of the store. As some would say, they really pop.

As part of this year’s Convenience Store News Store Design Contest, the judges felt that four entries fit that bill and as such, these retailers are being honored as specialty winners in addition to the main award categories that focus more on overall store design.

Giant Eagle Inc.’s Southside Works GetGo store in Pittsburgh, Pa., is the winner for Best Green Design. This 5,266-square-foot convenience store is a registered LEED project with the U.S. Green Building Council. The design objective was to provide the area’s urban customers with a convenient shopping experience that features GetGo’s latest, fresh convenience offerings and fuel, while utilizing proven sustainable green building strategies.

In the area of exterior design, United Oil Co.’s Chevron location in Cerritos, Calif., takes top honors for its unique storefront. The front of the building consists of sheets of frosted laminated glass that alternate between vertical and folded. The glass on the sides of the folded sheets is clear, offering slivers of views into the store. The design is meant to evoke cascading water.

Two retailers are also being recognized for excellence in their presentation of beverages — a key category for the convenience channel.

The Parker’s store in Garden City, Ga., which opened in October 2012, is the winner for Best Fountain Presentation. Its LED signage is very effective at drawing customers’ attention to the 24-head fountain with Parker’s signature Chewy Ice.

Along the same lines, Highland Corp.’s Fast Stop store in Spring Hill, Tenn., beckons guests to purchase packaged beverages through the use of eye-catching graphics atop its cold vault. The store sports a travel theme, with the cold vault fitting branded the “Polar Express.”

The CSNews design awards, now in their eighth year, honor convenience retailers who have created the most exciting, innovative and shopper-friendly looks for their stores. Entries are judged on innovation, creativity and the positive impact of the overall design on the business.

The winners and honorable mentions for Best Original Store Design, Best Interior Design, Sky’s the Limit Remodel, Best Mid-Budget Remodel and Best Low-Cost Remodel were featured in the September issue of CSNews.

Giant Eagle’s design objective for building the Southside Works GetGo store was to provide its urban customers with a convenient shopping experience featuring its latest, fresh convenience offerings and fuel, while utilizing proven sustainable green building strategies.

Opened in February, the 5,266-square-foot convenience store with 16 fuel pumps is a registered LEED project with the U.S. Green Building Council. The store is located in a dense, urban Pittsburgh neighborhood on a former brownsite that was once the home of a steel mill. A conscious effort was made to pay homage to the area’s steel history in the design.

As for “green” features, this GetGo location boasts a ton of environmentally friendly design elements from the outside in. For starters, it is the first of Giant Eagle’s fuel stations to host solar panels on the fuel canopy. The photovoltaic system is estimated to produce more than 70 percent of the energy required to power the canopy lighting, fuel pumps and accessories. Renewable energy is also generated on-site through solar arrays installed on the store’s roof.

To educate customers, Giant Eagle equipped the store’s café with a real-time solar monitor that converts the energy generated into commonly understood metrics such as gallons of gas saved, number of trees saved and pounds of waste diverted from landfills. These metrics are presented by week, month and year to date. Wall signage explaining what is being seen on the monitor is located nearby.

Other green features of the Southside Works GetGo are:

• 15,780 square feet of green space.
• Efficient toilet and urinal fixtures estimated to reduce inside water usage by 35 percent.
• Non-ozone depleting refrigerants used in the HVAC and refrigeration systems.
• Low VOC-emitting products used for all adhesives, sealants, paints and coatings.
• Smoking prohibited within 25 feet of entries, outdoor air intakes and operable windows.
• Two dedicated areas for the collection and temporary storage of recyclable materials.
• A clearly marked in-store collection point for comingled recyclables.
• To optimize energy performance and atmosphere, the project followed the ASHRAE Advanced Energy Design Guide for Small Retail Buildings 2006.
• More than 95 percent of construction waste was diverted from landfills.

According to Giant Eagle, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star Target Finder estimates that this design earns an energy performance rating of 100 percent.

— Linda Lisanti

United Oil Co.’s proposal for a glass convenience store in Cerritos, Calif., was such a compelling design that the city actually rewrote an ordinance to accommodate the project and then voted to consider it a work of public art — the first time they had done so for architecture.

The front of this one-of-a-kind store is constructed from sheets of frosted laminated glass that alternate between vertical and folded, in varying widths. There is no exposed metal framing on the sheets of glass and customers see only glass and caulking from the exterior. Meanwhile, the glass on the sides of the folded sheets is clear, which affords slivers of views inside the store and adds to its overall intrigue.

The project’s architect Kevin Oreck, president of Kevin Oreck Architect Inc., said this effect is very difficult and expensive to achieve. The materials were specially engineered and fabricated by Novum Structures LLC, a company that specializes in glass structures. “The intent was that the glass would be reminiscent of cascading water,” Oreck explained. “Along the entire length of the front of the building is a fountain with jets that are programmed to create turbulence during the day and a calmer wave pattern at night so that the lights would project a moving water pattern on the glass. This is especially dramatic from the inside of the store at night.”

Adding to the store’s intrigue is its lack of signage, except for a logo on its doors. The landscape, designed by Jamie Schwentker of Schwentker-Watts Design, consists of grass and reeds planted in front of the fountain, and dense bamboo that lines the sides of the property and will eventually be visible above the building to screen the station from the adjacent residential neighborhood.

Customers who wonder what’s behind the glass exterior find themselves compelled to explore. Meant to feel like a cave behind a waterfall, the store has a ceiling that slopes down toward the rear, allowing for all rooftop equipment to be concealed from view. The back wall is covered in custom glass tile that varies between frosted and glassy, and the cashier window is a series of cascading sheets of bullet-resistant glass.

— Samantha Negraval

The Parker’s store in Garden City, Ga., which opened in October 2012, has several design elements that catch the eye. One, in particular, is its fountain drink presentation.

LED signage in Parker’s signature blue and green colors illuminates the 24-head fountain, beckoning customers over by calling out the 79-cent price point for a 32-ounce beverage, as well as Parker’s signature Chewy Ice. Meticulously organized cup, lid and straw dispensers on both sides and at the bottom of the fountain dispenser add to the area’s overall appeal.

According to the retailer, its goal when designing the Garden City Parker’s location was to create a store that would be visually appealing, with clean lines and a welcoming design. The 4,000-square-foot store features upscale detailing work, such as Italian porcelain tile throughout, along with extra-wide aisles, artisan lighting, wooden display cases and immaculate restrooms.

In addition to the 24-head fountain, other dispensed beverage offerings include a large selection of fresh-brewed iced teas, six flavors of gourmet coffee and a condiment bar for customization.

“Developed with an eye toward design and quality, this new build has raised the standard for convenience stores in the area and has quickly become one of the company’s most profitable and well-trafficked stores,” Parker’s stated in its contest entry.

— Linda Lisanti

It’s not every day that a convenience store’s cold vault design actually makes you want to step inside the cooler, but that’s the general feeling when you first see Fast Stop’s “Polar Express” train design. It’s as if opening one of the doors to grab a soda or a pack of beer may transport the customer to a land of everlasting refreshment.

“The original design intent for the store was ‘everything travel,’” as parent company Highland Corp. explained in its contest entry. “The travel theme welcomes the traveler with warm brick materials combined with bright corresponding colors to create a very comfortable, yet upscale look.”

The new-build store, located in Spring Hill, Tenn., is Highland’s 11th Fast Stop location. The family-owned company was founded in 1936, and all of its stores are located in central and southern Tennessee. Designed by Paragon Solutions Inc., this particular store boasts a brick and stone exterior and a modern interior design. Its unique cross between antique and contemporary is conveyed in the store’s cold vault design.

When customers first enter the store, their attention is drawn to the wall space immediately above the 19 cooler doors. The design includes a twisting black railroad track and bold lettering that labels the various sections: Ice Cap Beers, Ice Cold Beer, Polar Express and Ice Cold Drinks. Follow the tracks and a blue steam engine appears to be chugging along in the far right corner over the cooler doors. The Ice Cold Beer section, located in the back right corner, also features a white and blue design, with train tracks leading toward an opening of light in a tunnel.

While the Polar Express cold vault is its own special section, the red brick in the design allows for a seamless transition to the colorfully tiled fountain drink and f’real milkshake wall.

Perhaps the cold vault’s most eye-catching design element, however, is an old-fashioned analog clock that tells Fast Stop customers they have arrived at a destination — a convenience store located at the intersection of past and present. The station clock also serves to remind customers to grab their goods and go, lest they miss out on the next train.

— Samantha Negraval