Grocery Archaeology

Original Tenant: A&P Address:  1002 NJ-36, Atlantic Highlands, NJ Opened:  1970s Closed:  2015 Later Tenants:  subdivided Photographed:  December 2020 Up until 2015, Atlantic Highlands had two supermarkets -- the Foodtown that we saw yesterday, and this store, which was a 24,000 square foot 1970s-era A&P. Acme Style's post on the Foodtown also has a great look at this A&P when in business, but today it's been subdivided and nicely revitalized with these two new tenants. Clearly the Foodtown has long been the preferred store in town, as Acme Style explains, so no great loss here with the A&P closing. Up next, we're going to take a trip over the Highlands-Sea Bright Bridge out to Sea Bright, where we're taking a look at an independent store on The Independent Edition tomorrow!

It's time for our next (northern) Jersey Shore group! Unfortunately this is as far south as we'll be getting on the east coast of New Jersey, though we'll go a bit farther south when we get out to the western part of the state. We're going to pass along the coast through Port Monmouth, Atlantic Highlands, Sea Bright, Long Branch, West Long Branch, Belmar, and Brick with a relatively small group of just over a week's worth of stores. However, we'll double up on a few days so we see more than one store a day. As we can see in the map above, we're actually heading back up to north of the  Holmdel  area, then continuing all along the shore to Brick, which is about 20 miles south of  Tinton Falls  where we ended the last group. All of our coverage is going to be in Monmouth County, except for Brick Township which is in Ocean County. But for now, we'll be going back to the very northeastern part of Monmouth County tomorrow, for not one but  two  Foodtowns tomo...

Original Tenant: A&P Address: 990 Shrewsbury Rd Opened:  1990s Closed:  2015 Later Tenants:  ACME Markets (2015-2019) Photographed:  January 2021 It's time for our final Northern & Central Monmouth store! The Tinton Falls ACME opened right across the street from the existing Shrewsbury ACME in 2015, with Shrewsbury closing the following year -- then Tinton Falls closing in 2019. Today, Tinton Falls remains vacant while Shrewsbury has been subdivided. You can see Acme Style's coverage here of both stores. Tinton Falls, a 90s-era A&P, was much larger than the 34,000 square foot Shrewsbury location at 61,000 square feet. But both of these are smaller than the 78,000 square foot ShopRite of Shrewsbury built just behind the former ACME. The Tinton Falls ACME remains vacant, as we can see in this January 2021 visit. This store was never remodeled by ACME, meaning that much of A&P remains on the inside. And, for that matter, on the outside. There's defini...

Original Tenant: Food Circus Foodtown Address: 853 NJ-35, Middletown, NJ Opened:  1956 Closed:  1991 Later Tenants:  Spirits Unlimited > Circus Wines Photographed:  January 2021 Nothing special about this 25,000 square foot former Foodtown, now a liquor store, here in Middletown, right? Wrong. The store closed in 1991 and doesn't appear to have had a replacement (Food Circus, now called Circus Fresh Foods, owns stores in Port Monmouth and Atlantic Highlands along the coast to the north, and Red Bank, Ocean, and Sea Girt to the south. They've had other stores around which have closed but we'll be seeing three of those four stores.) Now let's jump into this location... Very cool, barely visible neon sign for Circus Liquors which previously took up a narrow strip along the side of the building but is now the entire building. The property is massive, spanning well over six acres. It contains two outparcels and I'm pretty sure Circus could have comfortably built a 6...

Original Tenant: ShopRite Address: 1447 NJ-35, Middletown, NJ Opened:  1970s Closed:  1990s Later Tenants:  subdivided Photographed:  January 2021 I'm a little unclear on where exactly the boundaries of this former ShopRite are, but it appears that this entire strip -- starting with what's now Furniture Town on the right, all the way through the Party Fair, Retro Fitness, and Walgreens spaces to the left -- was built as a 47,000 square foot Saker ShopRite in the 1970s with the mall. The store was later replaced by a 75,000 square foot, much more modern but poorly situated new store at the other end of the mall in the 1990s, which in turn was deemed too outdated (and too hard to get to, I'm sure) by around 2020 when construction of an all-new ShopRite began in a former Sears just across the highway. For a look at the current and future Middletown ShopRites, check out today's post over on The Market Report . Tomorrow, we're heading a bit east along 35 to see a small...

Original Tenant: A&P Address: 2101 NJ-35, Holmdel, NJ Opened:  unknown Closed:  2015 Later Tenants:  Hobby Lobby Photographed:  January 2021 Our second Holmdel store is the 58,000 square foot former A&P in the Holmdel Town Center. Built in the 80s and later extensively remodeled to the A&P Fresh 3.0 decor package, this store closed at the beginning of A&P's 2015 bankruptcy. Acme Style captured the store after closing here (that post also has a link to the store while in business). While Hobby Lobby has extensively changed the space, the labelscar from A&P actually is still visible under their sign... You can clearly make out the outline of the oval to the left and the "fresh" lettering next to it under the Hobby Lobby sign. That's all for this store, and if you missed it, check out our tour at the Dearborn Market just up the street here ! Tomorrow, we're heading east to Middletown for two more stores -- the former store on  Grocery Archaeo...

Original Tenant: unknown Address: 3057 NJ-35, Hazlet, NJ Opened:  unknown Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  99 Cent Dreams (??-ca. 2010) > ALDI (ca. 2010-2019) Photographed:  January 2021 In 2019, the 20,000 square foot ALDI in Hazlet moved across the street into 24,000 square feet of a former Pathmark . Since there is room to expand in this space, I assume the move was more about location in the newly renovated Hazlet Town Center and moving out of the Hazlet Plaza whose anchor, Toys R Us, had just closed. (It's since become a Harbor Freight Tools and a Goodwill.) After ALDI and Toys R Us moved out, the strip mall was remodeled. The inside of the former ALDI was also cleared out, though some parts remain. Here we can see the former entrance/exit. ALDI decals remain on the entrance doors. We can see the ALDI in progress of being cleared out. It's possible some of the fixtures from this store, which was not that old, were brought over to the new store. Carts seem t...

Original Tenant: Grand Union (?) Address: 1390 NJ-36, Hazlet, NJ Opened:  1956 Closed:  1975 Later Tenants:  subdivided Photographed:  December 2020 Quite the store here at Airport Plaza in Hazlet, a 115,000 square foot mall with lots of tiny stores and a DMV (or, as we call them here in NJ, an MVC or Motor Vehicle Commission). That office takes up part of a 17,000 square foot arched roof former supermarket, which was a Grand Union according to JoshAustin610 . I'm very interested in this question of arched-roof Grand Unions since discussing it on the Tenafly post . This store does indeed more closely resemble the Penn Fruit prototype than any other Grand Union models, though with some notable differences. Most noticeably, the arch extends to the front wall (as seen above), but then slopes down in back rather than extending all the way to the back wall as Penn Fruit stores did. Tenafly similarly slopes down. An even stranger model in Union slopes down in both the ...