It was indeed a Tandy concept. I actually went to the Wilsonville Incredible Universe store job fair. It was either the first or second store to open in the chain...the Dallas-Ft Worth area store opened within days of Wilsonville.
Didn't end up working there, but I sure did shop there. My cousin and I nicknamed it the "Incredible Overglorified Radio Shack" after it opened.
The concept was to be an interactive event store with knowledgeable employees who would get you the equipment that fit your specific needs. A place where you could play with the product before you bought, where you would come for product-related events.
You entered into a circular hub with a center court. An elaborate disc jockey stand was one of the first things you saw. Various departments, set up like mall shops, surrounded the center court area. The area had a large music store, camera store, computer store, software store, phone store, a Radio Shack-like parts store, etc. There was a second level above this intended as a food court, but I don't think it had anything but a Pizza Hut.
Exiting the court towards the back, you entered a huge second area with televisions, appliances, and home theater. There were some theater rooms to sample equipment in, much like an Ultimate Electronics today.
They also had a bargain room (dubbed the "Black Hole") and accessory areas as you wound back, left, and around toward the front of the store left of the court area where the checkouts were (which actually handled very little of the merchandise...most of it was sold within departments). There was a small corridor to the checkout area from the center court area, but the idea was to circle you through the whole sales floor. The checkout area had a massive "impulse buy" space. Candy, blank tapes, oddball stuff...
And that was basically half the structure. The rest of the building was back room stock space and install areas.
It was a neat idea but very labor intensive. And they were priced kind of high. But it was a great place to browse...to check stuff out...and bargains could be found. And their selection was...well...incredible.
The disc jockey booth disappeared pretty quickly. The center court area became floor space for featured products and big sale items. I remember a Canon rep there to highlight their fax machines was really annoyed about the whole thing because she was used to office supply store presentations and had no idea she'd be put in the middle of something like this.
The very last thing I bought at Incredible Universe was a digital phone/answering machine at the Sandy, UT store. It was the display model, which I pulled right off the wall at the store closing event.
Fry's acquired a significant block of the stores. The Wilsonville store was one of those. I've been in the Wilsonville Fry's once and it was depressing as hell. They painted everything white and used a dot matrix printer to create department signage. It was a dump.
The Sandy, UT store was where Costco sits now (the Incredible Universe sign remained for years after it died) and the Denver store became the "Great Indoors" (the one by Park Meadows). In both cases, I think they used part of the original structure (basically some of the exterior walls) in their construction.
Here's the Wilsonville store...