Trickum - Lilburn, GA
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| Former Columbus #8 Sing Store - 2021 |
Trickum
Sing Food Store
Lilburn, GA 30047
If you thought my posts about Winters Chapel or Memorial Drive were short, well wait until you see this one! Even though I personally never went inside either of those stations, at least I had the option.
Unfortunately, the Trickum Sing Store was torn down over 25 years ago (similar to the Powder Springs, Sandy Plains, & Redan stores). With that being said, I know this station was one of Sing's small-format square prototypes thanks to the only pictures I have of it in its original form: satellite imagery. Because of this, I decided to recycle a photo I took of the Columbus #8 Sing Store to give an idea of how this location would have looked. The original structure was replaced by a larger convenience store (which still operates today), but I did not feel compelled to drive to a site that had been torn down such a long time ago. The one interesting redeeming factor I found is the adjacent carwash. I believe this structure was built by Sing (and one of the very few examples of Sing operating a carwash) and retains many of the company's architectural characteristics. The yellow faux shingle work was iconic for the brand.
Additionally, I found where the carwash was a joint venture between Sing Oil Company and Sing-Wilkes. You are probably asking, "What is Sing-Wilkes?" (especially since I haven't written a post about Thomasville #1 yet), but Sing-Wilkes was the name of the company started by Mr. Ted Wilkes which used to operate one of Thomasville, GA's Sing dealer stations in the 1950's. I'll dive into more of that history later, but I found it odd for a legacy Sing dealer to form a joint venture with the company to open a carwash in Atlanta!
The only mention of this store I was able to find in a newspaper was a short segment about two people who were accused of selling illegal drugs.
Since Sing's convenience store was torn down, I don't exactly know when it would have been originally built. However, here is where context clues come into play. I do know that Sing leased an adjacent storefront to Carlson Cleaners from 4/1/79 to 3/31/89. I also know from the Gwinnett County Tax Records that the carwash was built in 1979. With those two circumstantial pieces of evidence, and the fact that 1979 also saw Sing build three more stations of the same prototype (Columbus #7, Columbus #8, and Jackson #2), I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the Trickum Sing Store was built in 1979. While these stores may feel a bit claustrophobic today, it is sad that this store was not able to survive into the twenty-first century. When I get around to writing my post on the Sandy Plains store, you will get a good look at how the small-format square prototype of Sing Stores would have looked back in the 1970's -- it will be a treat! We'll also find ourselves exploring another closed retailer which happened to be only a short distance away: the first and last of its kind in Georgia. Before I get to far ahead of myself, I think it would be wise to move on to Part III of When Publix Waves Goodbye.
Street Views
Aerial Views
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| Historic Aerials - 1978 Future site of Trickum Sing Store on the southern corner of intersection |
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| Historic Aerials - 1981 Trickum Sing Store & carwash (near bottom edge of photo) |
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| Historic Aerials - 1993 Trickum Amoco station, shortly before its demise |
The Publix Museum
Well here we are, we have finally made it to the final part of my miniseries When Publix Waves Goodbye. Just as a recap, so far we have looked at how Publix aggressively entered the Atlanta grocery market in the early 1990's and explored some of the reasons why several of their stores have failed. We have also gone on tours of former Publix #477 and former Publix #535, while exploring a short tangent about the strange life of former Publix #790 in the heart of Downtown. Along the way, we observed some perplexing remnants of Publix's 1990's interior decor package and saw the odd combination of 2004's Classy Market 1.0 mixed with Wavy Pastels. Today we will get to see the haunting Ghost of Publix Past rear its coral-and-teal head once again as we tour what I like to call "The Publix Museum." If you were intrigued by the previous two posts in this series, you will be shocked by what you see today, just as I was when I discovered this store's existence.
As a bit of housekeeping, I now have an official Sing Oil Blog email address, so check out the "Contact" page to let me know if you have any stories about Sing Stores, 1990's Publixes, or anything else that may be relevant to the blog. Also, don't forget to click on the "More than Convenience" logo above to check out all of the other feature posts on the blog. My next feature post will dive into a rare Kroger interior that I happened to come across, so be sure to check it out in a few weeks.
Some Background
Since I started this series, I had wondered what the story of the Nam Dae Mun Farmers Market chain was. As I was researching this post, I finally confirmed that Nam Dae Mun is Korean for 'South Great Gate' (Spelled 남대문). It seems like the company decided to split their name into three words, while most sources I found online combine the three words into one. Anyhow, the Namdaemun is one of eight gates in Seoul's fortress wall and seems to be a recognizable structure for South Koreans. There also happens to be a historic market of the same name adjacent to the gate, which explains why the Georgia chain would have picked this for their brand.
The Nam Dae Mun chain seems to have started in 2005 and rebranded to their current name around 2011 (just before their purchase of this store, former Publix #520). Interestingly, their website used to be "nsgifm.com", and I believe the last part stood for "Gwinnett International Farmers Market" (the name for their Duluth location at the time). In an attempt to piece together the mysteries of this post, here are Nam Dae Mun's current locations in what I believe is the order they opened:
- 2005 - NDM #7: 3825 Shackleford Road, Duluth, GA
- 200x - NDM #5: 4805 Lawrenceville Highway, Lilburn, GA - Former Winn-Dixie / Save Rite
- 200x - NDM #6: 2350 Spring Road, Smyrna, GA - Former Winn-Dixie / Save Rite
- 2012 - NDM #8: 850 Dogwood Road, Lawrenceville, GA - Former Winn-Dixie / Save Rite
- 2012 - NDM #3: 6131 South Norcross Tucker Road, Norcross, GA - Former Publix #520
- 2014 - NDM #2: 5158 Memorial Drive, Stone Mountain, GA - Former Publix #535
- 2017 - NDM #4: 1940 Mount Zion Road, Morrow, GA - Former Target
- 2017 - NDM #1: 2148 South Cobb Drive, Smyrna, GA - Former Publix #580
I normally don't research the businesses that take over a store I've photographed, but there were too many mysteries related to this series that I at least needed a clearer picture. This list helped me solve one mystery: Why did two Nam Dae Mun stores have seemingly original Wavy Pastels signs, two others have bootleg versions, and several others have Save Rite décor remnants? It looks to me like the company used to keep whatever décor they found in a building in-tact when they moved in (hence the Save Rite relics in #5, #6, & #8) until they discovered the wonders of Wavy Pastels when they purchased former Publix #520 in 2012. From that point on, every store they have opened has utilized some version of Publix's 1990's interior package. While I still don't know where they got most of the signs used in former Publix #535 that we saw last week, it seems as if they purchased them in anticipation of opening another store. After the supply of vintage Wavy Pastels signs dried up, the company resorted to making their own for stores #1 and #4. One other piece of this story I find odd is how Publix #580 closed with Classy Market 2.5 (Nam Dae Mun left some traces behind, like the aisle signs), but the department signage was swapped for a Bootleg Pastels package. Meanwhile, I have found pictures online where Nam Dae Mun #7 seemingly uses some Classy Market 2.5 department signs. While I'm not sure why they would bother making new signs for NDM #1, it looks like they took Publix's signs out of that store and put them in NDM #7. Whew, so confusing! I still can't figure out what their store numbering scheme is, but I am tired of trying to solve the puzzles of Nam Dae Mun.
Part III
Nam Dae Mun #3 / Former Publix #520
Publix Plaza
6130 S Norcross Tucker Road
Norcross, GA 30093
Now that we have learned a little about the Nam Dae Mun chain, let's take a closer look at my favorite store of theirs.
Some History
Publix first announced
they would open store #520 in February 1994, with a June 1995
completion date. However, I first saw this store mentioned in a
circular on May 13, 1995, meaning it was opened ahead of schedule.
Just like every other store I have covered in this series, Publix attempted to operate this location until they realized it was unprofitable for one reason or another. As a refresher, I mentioned former Publix #790 on my last post because I noticed a trend in underperforming stores being used as "Publixity" stunts for the emerging Atlanta market. I found two instances of former Publix #520 being used to highlight the chain's diversity efforts in the area, one of which was in conjunction with former store #477 before it closed. Based on my judgment, I believe the chain saw the writing on the wall for this store long before it closed in 2006 but attempted to adapt it to the local market before throwing in the towel.
According to a 2002 article that I mentioned in my previous post, Publix #520 was "perhaps one of the most diverse in the Atlanta division." It was heralded at the time for having six or seven languages spoken amongst its employees and was said to frequently get calls to assist with translations "when there were language issues at other (Publix) locations."
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| Courtesy Newspapers.com - Publix #520 Produce Department |
During my research, I was lucky enough to come across a picture of this store while it was still a Publix. Here we can see the produce department showcasing "a variety of Hispanic specialty produce." (The uniform that we see Ms. Suaras wearing brings back so many memories!) While we aren't blatantly shown anything from the Wavy Pastels package, I do see a few things I want to point out. The first is the fact that the awnings are still teal and not olive, meaning this store had not been remodeled to Classy Market 1.0, which happened to only be a year old at the time this article was published. Second, I notice a few secondary category signs from Classy Market 1.0 hanging above the coolers. These would have been added fairly recently before this photo was taken and included both English and Spanish text. You can zoom in to the sign on the right edge of the picture to see this, but this fact will come into play later on in the post.
Furthermore, according to that same 2005 article, this store was specifically stocked with Hispanic & Latino customers in mind. Apparently, "Publix went to Mexico to research what products and brands were preferable, and . . . found out which pockets of Mexico they were coming from." Another quote from this article that seemed to strike home was "When the demographics of a neighborhood change, your grocer may be the first to notice." Oh, how hindsight is 20/20.
Contrary to the last store we visited, Publix #520 closed outright in 2006. I'm almost certain that Publix would have seen the writing on the wall for this store before the September 2005 article was published; conversely, it still managed to highlight this location as either a last ditch effort to save it, or as an attempt to garner good will before they closed it.
The next piece of information I uncovered was that Nam Dae Mun didn't move into this location until 2012. This caused me to wonder, what happened to the building between 2006 and 2012? Thanks to Google Street View, I found out that the store was home to a Hispanic supermarket for some time in the interim; although, it seems to have closed by 2011. This makes the situation inside the store seem even more strange.
The Store
I will admit, I have now "witnessed" this store twice. Thankfully, I don't have any horror stories compared to my visit to former Publix #535 for Part II, but I was "witnessed" to on one of my trips. Both of my experiences at this store were on the same day as my trips to #535, and both happened to be on a Sunday. While the former will come into play later in this story, the latter is important because on my second trip, there happened to be a man with a speaker system in the parking lot who was evangelizing to the passersby. It was quite an interesting experience. Proselytizers aren't rare to find in the Bible Belt, but this situation happened to be in Spanish. While I did take a few Spanish classes back in school, I primarily heard the man repeating "hallelujah" or "the time is now" or "children." Regardless, his point was still able to transcend the language barrier.
The man managed to pick a good location to spread his news because the parking lot of this store was very crowded and seemed quite small for grocery store standards. This store also happened to be the smallest of the three stores I visited for this series, ringing in around 47,000 sq. ft. I refer to this prototype as the 47N (which you can read more about here, or see AFB's recent tour of another closed 47N here), but it is basically a scaled down version of the Nam Dae Mun we visited two weeks ago.
Similar to the former Publix #477 that we saw a few weeks back, this store was pretty crowded during both of my visits.
Nam Dae Mun seemed to cover up the vestibule windows on these stores for some reason, which you can see from this picture.
I also noticed something interesting: while Publix typically varied a store's façade between locations in the 1990's, I have seen this particular design in at least two other locations (#470 in Newnan, and the former #623 in Beufort). Additionally, all three of these stores used a different prototype!
Now with that behind us, let's jump into former Publix #520.
Stepping inside, I was greeted with a typical 1990's Publix vestibule, except this store had opted to use the former cart storage area for a Cricket Wireless store. Again, I forget where this store kept most of its shopping carts, but I feel like they could have used the obvious space!
Just inside the store, I noticed something very intriguing. While I have seen many 1990's skylights on my Publix journeys, I never remember seeing one where the support beams were painted teal. Those light fixtures also look to be original; I know this is going to be good! But wait, there's more!
One thing that I do believe is that this sign was moved from its original location to accommodate Nam Dae Mun's enlarged produce department. As they had done with #535, they closed off the old pharmacy counter and removed the HBA aisles to extend the produce section toward the front of the store. We can see where the old pharmacy counter would have been in this shot. We also see another relic which I thought was long-ago relegated to the landfills across the Southeast: Publix's original louvered panels which hung over the awning structures.
We'll take a quick look over the extended produce department, toward the area where fruits used to be restricted to.
If you look closely at the picture above, you can see the track lighting trellis Publix would have used in their produce department. Unfortunately, Nam Dae Mun has removed the lights form it an instead uses more of the conduit rings we saw in the other part of the produce section.
I believe this produce stand has not moved since the store opened in 1995.
My next fun find was this produce scale. Wow, does this bring back some memories! Publix has long-since gotten rid of this style of scale in favor of a smaller model, probably because of people like me who would pull on them to see how far the needle would go. I'm glad that this unit has survived the test of time. Next to the scale, I also spot some produce stands with Publix's original teal cart bumpers.
Speaking of those louvered panels, I wanted to get a closer shot to show how they were built. I'm not sure what material was used, but Publix seemed to line the back of them with a black paper or paint to add a depth effect.
Here we see more of the panels along the back wall of the store.
Gosh, even though it might be a bit dated, I just love the aesthetic of this sign! I'm also pretty sure that the teal used in its background is the same shade as the paint on the awnings and the skylight support structure. While Evergreen doesn't look bad (and it looks much better in person to those who have only seen pictures), I feel like Wavy Pastels did a good job of utilizing a lot of white surfaces while still keeping visual interest through pops of color (the signs and awnings) and textures (the warehouse ceiling, louvered panels, metal awnings, 3D signs). I feel like the painted awnings make the space feel a lot less sterile than a simple green stripe around the perimeter. After all, Publix will always be Florida's supermarket, so why not embrace it!
Turning toward the back of the store, if you weren't already convinced that this store had authentic Wavy Pastels décor, maybe this will convince you:
Matching category signs!!!! I never thought I would get to experience Wavy Pastels again, but this store is just the gift that keeps on giving! This picture looks like it could have been taken in a Publix 20 years ago! I do, however, find it interesting that Nam Dae Mun left these signs up but didn't put the corresponding items under them. I also think it is funny how the Margarine trend of the 1990's led to Publix putting that on the sign rather than "butter." Oh, how times change!
While these signs look just the way Publix left them from the left side
of the store, the first curiosity arises when viewed from the middle; more on that in a second.
I also wanted to note how this store still features Publix's original milk cooler configuration (just like former store #477).
The large, fake sombrero hanging from the ceiling isn't quite a fern, but that brings up another curiosity: as I understand, Nam Dae Mun is a Korean grocery chain, but this store was obviously catering to a large Hispanic population.
As I was alluding to before, somebody decided to cover the right side of the signs with Spanish text. While we can obviously see where a card was stuck over Publix's text, the designers did a pretty good job of matching both the purple color in the sign and the original font. I thought it was a pretty good effort to match the décor to the neighborhood's demographics while still preserving the initial designer's intent.
Another thing I noticed when looking at these signs is how they were a type of canvas stretched over a triangular form. If you noticed, this is a different style than the ones in this picture AFB shared a few years back. Those category signs look like banners hanging from a triangular structure but share a similar design and effect. Maybe the ones in #520 were an earlier design?
I don't have much more to say about these signs, but I have plenty of other pictures of them to share. Since these are possibly the only versions of these signs that aren't buried in a landfill, I wanted to make sure they were well documented. Again, these are something I never dreamed I would get to see! Hopefully they will continue to hang around for future generations to see.
¿Vegetales o huevos? ¡¿Por qué no los dos?!
If Spanish is your language of choice, then I would advise shopping in a counterclockwise fashion through this store.
Taking a break from the signs, we'll take a quick look at some of the grocery aisles. Aisle 5 seems to be home to canned goods and pasta.
Circling back to the front of the store, we can see the customer service counter and a sign that looks awfully familiar to the one used in #535. Again, this is the one sign that I am not sure whether Nam Dae Mun modified an original sign to add their logo or if they made it from scratch. This picture from an actual Publix doesn't help the case. AFB, however, is convinced that it is real.
While they were still located where Publix had left them in the center of the store, the freezers now encompassed aisle 2.
I spy some teal cart bumpers on some vintage freezers!
Returning
to the back aisle of the store, we see the seafood department in its
original location, just extended a bit forward into the actionway. Like I
said in my last post, I just love the colors used in the seafood sign!
What I didn't love, however, was the pungent smell of fish in this section of
the store.
Something I noticed that was strange is how there was a lone Classy Market 1.0-style category sign hanging over the seafood department. I initially discounted it as a fraud, but then I found the picture above depicting this exact store with other bilingual CM 1.0 signs in the produce department. How crazy is that?! With that realization, I began to take a closer look at the Spanish signs pasted on the dairy category markers and noticed how well the font and colors matched the originals. Did Publix modify their own signs to add Spanish text? This may forever remain a mystery, but the evidence is pretty compelling.
Next up, we'll get a "cleaner" view of seafood, and some more of those awnings and louvered panels. As with the previous stores, the seafood department was probably the busiest section in the store, so it was very hard to photograph. This store had a similar section of housewares to #535, although Nam Dae Mun decided to put those two aisles toward the right edge of the store.
If you look to the right of the employee behind the seafood counter, you can also see Publix's blue "specials" sign for the seafood department.
Adjacent to the seafood counter is the butcher counter. These shots were a bit more difficult to take because I didn't want to hook horns with anybody gazing over here.
What's even better is that this department still features Publix's original "Custom Cuts" sign over the butcher station and some Wavy Pastel
tiles on the backsplash! They even used neon chisel-tip markers to write on the black chalkboard segment of the sign, a sight common during the Wavy Pastels era!
The
department wouldn't be complete without more modified Wavy Pastels
category signs – in a matching color palette to the primary sign. I
find it interesting how the pink and red sections of these signs are
simply inverted from what we saw in the dairy section.
I also noticed that every single sign has at least one element that uses the same color peach: the watermelon in produce, the snapper in seafood, the pig in meats, the cake in the bakery, and the ham in the deli. Additionally, every category sign uses that shade of peach somewhere (the background for dairy and "restroom", the accent color for meats, and the wave for "phone"). Back to my love of the cohesion in this package!
I took two pictures of this poultry sign since the security camera kept getting in my way!
Heading over to the bakery on the right wall of the store, we see another example of an unaltered Wavy Pastels department sign hanging over its original companions (the louvered panels and teal awning).
Just for reference, here is a 2006 photo I found of the bakery in Columbus, GA's Publix #474. Pretty convincing, eh?
This store seems to have run amuck with coral and teal tile!
My next surprise came when I noticed Publix's "specials" signs still hanging against the back wall of the bakery. I believe these would have originally featured chalkboards on the bottom section of them, but they were still very cool to see in person.
Let's take one last look at the grand aisle before we move onto the deli.
As with most any of Publix's larger 1990's stores, the deli is adjacent to the bakery and features yet another Wavy Pastels sign. Compared to a number of Marketplace stores I have been to lately, this décor seems to have aged and held up really well over the last three decades. Maybe it is just the nostalgia in me, or maybe the Floridian style will forever be stuck with the 1980's and 1990's pastel color palette. At least Publix was ahead of their time with the white and airy aspects of the store!
Unfortunately,
this store did not have a "Farmers Kitchen" sign, which gives even more
weight to the theory of that sign being a bootleg copy. This store did
have a small seating area for patrons of the cafeteria.
Also in the front right corner of the store, we find the restrooms and telephone. As is the case with most modern businesses, Nam Dae Mun didn't seem to have a public telephone on this side of the store. Furthermore, the fact that there is still a sign for a phone with one of the Spanish placards gives even more weight to my theory that Nam Dae Mun "no españolizó" these signs.
"I'm at a payphone trying to call home
All of the linens are blocking my view"
I don't mean to be corny, but this is quite the assortment of products!
So much coral and teal . . .
and so many bulk packages of grains!
Our final interior picture was taken the other side of the store, looking back toward the restrooms. While I didn't get the opportunity to tour an active Publix with Wavy Pastels, I feel like this store served as a decent stand-in.
Due to all of the people, I didn't manage to photograph the checkout conveyor belts, but they seemed to be original to Publix as well. If I remember correctly, they had grey faux-textured panels on the side and featured the built-in white "lane closed" signs that can be pulled to signify a closed register.
This store is quite the aNAMaly! To say that this store left me dumbfounded is an understatement. As we saw with former Publix #477, I'm typically digging really deep to find traces of Publix past in a former store; however, I feel like most people who regularly shopped at the chain between 1991 and 2008 could easily recognize the relics in this store. I showed these pictures to a family member a few weeks back, and she was shocked at how many nostalgic memories came back to her after not thinking about any of this being a part of most Publix stores for over a decade. Ain't it crazy what a picture can do?
Birdseye Views
Thanks to DeKalb County property records for the birds eye view (even though this store is in Gwinnett County).
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| DeKalb PA - January 18, 2003 |
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| DeKalb PA - January 8, 2007 |
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| DeKalb PA - January 22, 2011 |
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| DeKalb PA - February 17, 2021 |
Aerial Views
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| Google Earth - January 1993 |
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| Google Earth - February 1999 |
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| Google Earth - November 2005 |
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| Google Earth - June 2007 |
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| Google Earth - March 2010 |
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| Google Earth - December 2020 |
Sign Comparison
To close out this series, I wanted to feature a side-by-side comparison of the signs in former Publix #520 and the signs in former Publix #535. Personally, when I see the two next to each other, it gives me pause as to what Nam Dae Mun has done to the signs in the Stone Mountain store. I still believe most of them use original components (mainly the 3D motifs) because those would be very hard to replicate and would require too much attention to detail for the chain when it doesn't apply that detail to other aspects. Why would they go through the effort to make a 3D watermelon cutout and have the seeds perfectly match the positioning on the original, when they don't make their logo or the chicken on "Farmers Kitchen" have the same detail.
My final theory, until I change my mind, is that the signs in former Pubix #520 are authentic (with the exception of Customer Service). Everything about them seems to match pictures I have found online of Publix's deluxe version of the package. Additionally, this store still has secondary and tertiary elements of the d̩cor package which Nam Dae Mun isn't even utilizing Рso why would they perfectly replicate a "Specials" sign in the bakery to not even use it?
As for Former Publix #535, I think the signs use original elements, but have been moved to a different backing to allow them to fit on the wall. I specifically compared the "Produce" sign, and the spacing on the letters seems off in addition to the spacing and alignment of the fruits & veggies. Furthermore, the sign in #520 has a blue secondary background while the sign in #535 uses the same purple color as the customer service sign. While the produce elements do have some slight differences (specifically a few missing white accents), I'm going to assume that these fell off when the fruits were being moved to a new backing material.
A different option is that these signs may not have been consistent from the start. We do have a very small sample size to compare, so Publix may have had consistency issues between the signs used stores.
Our third option is that all of these signs are fake bootlegs. I personally don't believe this based on how poorly Nam Dae Mun did with the bootlegs in former Publix #580 and the Target they took over. While I don't believe the signs in #535 are completely in their original configurations, I don't think they are entirely fake either.
So those are my thoughts, take a look at the comparisons below and let me know what you think!
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| Former Publix #535 - Deli |
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| Former Publix #520 - Deli |
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| Former Publix #535 - Bakery & Deli |
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| Former Publix #520 - Bakery |
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| Publix #474 - Courtesy Matt - Flickr - August 25, 2006 |
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| Former Publix #535 - Meats |
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| Former Publix #520 - Meats |
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| Former Publix #535 - Seafood |
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| Former Publix #520 - Seafood |
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| Former Publix #535 - Produce |
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| Former Publix #520 - Produce |
That'll be all for today, and that will conclude my series When Publix Waves Goodbye. I hope you enjoyed this journey as much as I did, and let's hope "The Publix Museum" will continue to serve patrons for years to come!
- The Sing Oil Blogger
Additional Resources:
Car Wash: R6087 172
Sing Store Parcel: R6087 002