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3 Lafayette Rd, Fords, NJ

Original Tenant: A&P
Address: 3 Lafayette Rd, Fords, Woodbridge, NJ
Opened: mid-1950s
Closed: 1990s
Later Tenants: Favorites at Woodbridge
Photographed: July 2020
Finishing up our A&P streak here on Grocery Archaeology with this 23,000 square foot former centennial store (you can still barely see the roofline intact behind the new facade). Given that this store opened in the mid-1950s -- it was open by 1958, before A&P's actual centennial the following year -- it was probably built as a more nondescript boxy store model and later converted to a centennial. By the late 1990s, the store moved up to downtown Woodbridge, and that store later closed in 2011. A&P also had a larger store, a former Stop & Shop, just to the southwest about a mile and a half in Edison, which we'll see when we get to Edison. While this wraps up our core Woodbridge coverage, we still have one more store to see within the municipal limits, out in the Hopelawn section right at the Perth Amboy border. Head over to The Market Report to tour that store tomorrow!

Comments

  1. Yep, that's the other one I was thinking of.

    Based on information I have (an event that someone was attending in the area, said event being early April 2000, and while they were there I was "wasting" time shopping, including this store en route from the event in Edison to where we were staying either within Woodbridge or possibly Rahway given how that line works on 1/9) that switch must have been a bit later (unless they ran both for a time)?

    Didn't realize it was as old as that, though. Although the Rite Aid (which it looks like is still that, in the corner of the picture, having not been turned over to Walgreens as it would have been changed by July 2020) definitely looks older as well and somehow managed to survive without being replaced.

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    1. Oh very interesting -- I definitely could see either scenario happening. Either the stores could've coexisted for a while (like Union/Kenilworth), or the newer Woodbridge location could've opened around 2000 instead of in the 90s. That actually wouldn't be so unusual I guess, especially if the store had been planned years earlier but had been held up by permit processes or competitor lawsuits or whatever; the Garwood ShopRite and the Elizabeth ShopRite are almost identical in layout and would've had the same decor package originally despite opening 10 years apart because Garwood was planned way earlier but held up by controversy over the number of entrance and exit driveways and the traffic it would cause.

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  2. Is this the shopping center with Vintage Vinyl?

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    1. Sure is, and you know, I almost went in just out of curiosity but I had more supermarkets to photograph that day!

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