Grocery Archaeology

Original Tenant:  Unknown Address:  184 Columbia Tpk, Florham Park, NJ Opened:  Unknown Closed:  Unknown Later Tenants: subdivided/Retro Fitness Photographed: November 2020 So it seems that I didn't do my homework before photographing the stores here in Florham Park. I photographed this store at the back of Crescent Plaza assuming it was a supermarket at some point, which it was not (I don't think, although it's still possible I suppose). Instead, it looks like it was built as a Drug Fair although it has a strong supermarket appearance. There's even still a cart corral visible along Retro Fitness's front sidewalk. There was also a Grand Union across Columbia Turnpike, and there's now a Trader Joe's next door along with a Kings in this same mall, which is our other post for the day. That wraps up the Morristown area, and tomorrow we'll be taking a look at what's next!

Original Tenant: Foodtown Address: 831 NJ-10, Whippany, Hanover, NJ Opened:  1991 Closed:  ca. 2000 Later Tenants:  Pathmark (ca. 2000-2011) > Farmtastic Supermarket (2014-2015) Photographed:  June 2020 Part 2 of our Pine Plaza coverage deals with this larger supermarket, built in 1991 by Michas Brothers Foodtown as a replacement for a much smaller store in a former A&P next door, which is part 1 . Michas Brothers (later Manyfoods) sold the 35,000 square foot store to Pathmark around 2000, which in turn closed in 2011 as the 20-year lease expired. In Cedar Knolls , we saw a Michas > Manyfoods > LaRacca Foodtown which then closed in early 2014. Well, a few months after the LaRaccas closed Cedar Knolls, they opened this location as Farmtastic Supermarket which lasted all of about 18 months before closing for good in mid to late 2015. As I mention in the A&P post, Pine Plaza is in an extensive redevelopment process which involved clearing out all of t...

Original Tenant: A&P Address: 831 NJ-10, Whippany, Hanover, NJ Opened:  1960s Closed:  1980s Later Tenants:  Foodtown (1980s-1991) Photographed:  June 2020 We arrive at the massive Pine Plaza in the Whippany section of Hanover Township once again after initially taking a look at the closed Farmtastic Supermarket back in 2018 . We're revisiting the Farmtastic location today as well, but the older supermarket in the mall is this centennial A&P, built in the early 60s and closing in the early to mid 80s. By the mid to late 80s, the A&P had become a Foodtown, which by 1991 moved down to an expansion of the plaza. Pine Plaza's property occupies nearly 20 acres of land but is completely vacant, awaiting redevelopment. Check out the Farmtastic post for more info on where the development is and what's happened lately. Tomorrow, we have two stores (one here on Grocery Archaeology and one over on The Market Report ) to finish out our Greater Morristown group!

Original Tenant:  Village ShopRite Address: 1711 NJ-10, Morris Plains, NJ Opened: 1964 Closed: 2013 Later Tenants: Uncle Giuseppe's (renovations began 2021) Photographed: June 2020 It's amazing that this Village ShopRite lasted all the way to 2013! Not so much that it was small, at over 40,000 square feet, but simply that it was outdated and wasn't renovated after the late 1970s, when Village gave it its last overhaul. It was replaced by the Cedar Knolls location , which was newly built closer to downtown Morristown and off NJ-10 -- notably moving farther away from the Morris Plains Stop & Shop , and much closer to the Morris Plains ACME . Acme Style captured the store soon before its closure, which you can see here (along with their coverage of the new location and the Stop & Shop). Here's what the store looked like after ShopRite's closure. The store had been cleaned out with an auction of the fixtures as you can see in the poster in the first pictu...

Original Tenant: Stop & Shop Address: 225 Ridgedale Ave, Cedar Knolls, Hanover, NJ Opened: 1973 Closed:  1980 Later Tenants:  Foodtown (1980-2014) Photographed:  June 2020 What's today the Cedar Knolls Plaza was originally a small enclosed mall, the Morris County Mall, featuring a Bradlees at the north end and a Stop & Shop at the south end. The Bradlees today is a Walmart, which is not a Supercenter, and the Stop & Shop became a Michas Brothers Foodtown in 1980. In 2002, the supermarket was switched to Manyfoods, also owned by the Michas brothers, and remained under the name Foodtown; the same year, William Louttit purchased Manyfoods from the Michas family. The following year, Manyfoods was liquidated, closing its River Vale and Wanaque stores (and in fact, I believe the latter briefly became a CTown) while Cedar Knolls was purchased by the LaRacca brothers, who owned several other nearby Foodtowns. The 30,000 square foot supermarket finally closed in 201...

Original Tenant: ShopRite Address: 164 Speedwell Ave, Morristown, NJ Opened: 1959 Closed: 1983 Later Tenants: subdivided Photographed: June 2020 Our second post of the day is this former ShopRite at Speedwell and Sussex Avenues in Morristown. JoshAustin610 lists the ShopRite as 164 Speedwell, and the convenience/dollar store seen at the point of the triangle lists its own address as 158 Speedwell. My assumption, though, is that the ShopRite probably took most of the first floor of this roughly triangular building -- because even if it took every single square inch of the building's first floor, it would be just barely over 10,000 square feet. Especially for a ShopRite that lasted until 1983, anything much smaller than that would be awfully small. I assume this store was a Village Super Market-owned location, since its replacement in 1983 was Village-owned. This corner entrance looks to me like a supermarket entrance, though the space currently has several tenants. The tiny L...

The Great Swamp area is done and we're moving north! Our next group of stores is going to be in the greater Morristown area. We're going to start in Morristown to check out four stores before heading northeast for a few stops in Morris Plains, a few stores in Hanover Township (which encompasses Cedar Knolls and Whippany), and finally back to the southeast to finish up in Florham Park. This is a pretty short group -- it's going to take us only a little over a week, although quite a few of those days will be doubled or tripled up for multiple stores at once. And we have a nice variety, with posts here, on  The Market Report , and on  The Independent Edition . Tomorrow, we're going to see our first Morristown store on The Market Report, so stay tuned!