Grocery Archaeology

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 ...