Acme and Philadelphia area shopping centers

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JoshAustin610
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Re: Acme and Philadelphia area shopping centers

Post by JoshAustin610 »

neil mcauliffe wrote:Acme #1558 was located at 1305 West Main Street, Norristown, PA.

There was another Acme #1755 but the only address I have is W. Germantown Pike, Norristown , PA.
Wow, so the current U-Haul building on Main St was originally an Acme? I always thought it was the original location of the first full-size Genuardi's store, that later moved to Jeffersonville (the store number was #1 until the Safeway acquisition). Did the Genuardi's maybe move in after Acme, or was it somewhere else, possibly where the CVS is now (1200 W. Main)?
Ephrata1966
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Re: Acme and Philadelphia area shopping centers

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neil mcauliffe wrote:The supermarket that was located within the Plymouth Meeting Mall was a Food Fair later converted to Pantry Pride. I think but I'm not positive they closed it in the 70s before the chain went bankrupt. I worked for the company in the late 60s and by then they had soured on the idea of stores within malls.
Cherry Hill Mall in Cherry Hill, NJ opened with a Food Fair inside. Around the same time as the name change, Food Fair relocated to across the street. The new store had a J.M. Fields attached. I am not sure what the first store is now, or what the second one originally looked like. Now the second is a Pathmark. The J.M. Fields I think never became a Bradlees or Kmart like most of them. It was a T.J. Maxx, which I think moved to the former A&P Futurestore/Super Fresh in nearby Marlton. So perhaps the J.M. Fields became a standard mid 80's T.J. Maxx? Now Big Lots is moving in. Perhaps this store was once a Rickel?

The Pantry Pride in Ventnor is a Pathmark too, except the J.M. Fields became Bradlees. I am not sure if it was Jefferson Ward too. The store is now divided between Dollar Tree and Peebles.

And by the way, the Acme in Norristown on Germantown Pike was a 70's model. The store closed in the early 2000s and has since been Big Lots.
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MikeRa
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Re: Acme and Philadelphia area shopping centers

Post by MikeRa »

JoshAustin610 wrote:
neil mcauliffe wrote:Acme #1558 was located at 1305 West Main Street, Norristown, PA.

There was another Acme #1755 but the only address I have is W. Germantown Pike, Norristown , PA.
Wow, so the current U-Haul building on Main St was originally an Acme? I always thought it was the original location of the first full-size Genuardi's store, that later moved to Jeffersonville (the store number was #1 until the Safeway acquisition). Did the Genuardi's maybe move in after Acme, or was it somewhere else, possibly where the CVS is now (1200 W. Main)?
The org. G. Genuardi and Sons opened in an empty superette located at 1967 West Main Street in 1939. The first Genuardi Supermarket was at 1930 West Main Street, on the site of an old mansion, and this store (Genuardi's #1) was built by the Genuardi family.
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Re: Acme and Philadelphia area shopping centers

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Ephrata1966 wrote:
neil mcauliffe wrote:The supermarket that was located within the Plymouth Meeting Mall was a Food Fair later converted to Pantry Pride. I think but I'm not positive they closed it in the 70s before the chain went bankrupt. I worked for the company in the late 60s and by then they had soured on the idea of stores within malls.
Cherry Hill Mall in Cherry Hill, NJ opened with a Food Fair inside. Around the same time as the name change, Food Fair relocated to across the street. The new store had a J.M. Fields attached. I am not sure what the first store is now, or what the second one originally looked like. Now the second is a Pathmark. The J.M. Fields I think never became a Bradlees or Kmart like most of them. It was a T.J. Maxx, which I think moved to the former A&P Futurestore/Super Fresh in nearby Marlton. So perhaps the J.M. Fields became a standard mid 80's T.J. Maxx? Now Big Lots is moving in. Perhaps this store was once a Rickel?
The Food Fair that was at Cherry Hill Mall was demolished and replaced by JCPenney
Ephrata1966
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Re: Acme and Philadelphia area shopping centers

Post by Ephrata1966 »

Interesting! Around when was that?

And what is the Plymouth Meeting store?

By the way, there was another Food Fair in Cherry Hill all along. This was in the "Ellisburg Circle" shopping center built in 1956. The store had their trademark tower and arched roof, which are both still used by Genuardi's. This was the first Genuardi's in NJ!

There also was the "Barclay" Centennial A&P across the street. Later it was a Drug Emporium and has been a hardware store and Asian market at different times.
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Re: Acme and Philadelphia area shopping centers

Post by MikeRa »

Ephrata1966 wrote:Interesting! Around when was that?

And what is the Plymouth Meeting store?

By the way, there was another Food Fair in Cherry Hill all along. This was in the "Ellisburg Circle" shopping center built in 1956. The store had their trademark tower and arched roof, which are both still used by Genuardi's. This was the first Genuardi's in NJ!

There also was the "Barclay" Centennial A&P across the street. Later it was a Drug Emporium and has been a hardware store and Asian market at different times.
It was in 1976/1977 when the Food Fair and the Market Court was demolished and replaced by the two story mall addition and JCPenney
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Re: Acme and Philadelphia area shopping centers

Post by MikeRa »

I was just looking on Historic Aerials.com and it looks like that if there was a supermarket at Plymouth Meeting Mall, it would have been added after the mall opened in 1967. It looks like where the office building at Plymouth Meeting Mall is was a different building that was in front of the Cinema Plymouth Meeting (today's the lower level Food Court).

It also shows that part of the roofline at the Boscov's was added after 1971, possibly when Hess's took over the Lit Brothers store. The Lit Brothers store org. looked like the current Boscov's at Vorheese Town Center (Echelon Mall)
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Re: Acme and Philadelphia area shopping centers

Post by neil mcauliffe »

The Food Fair/Pantry Pride in the Plymouth Meeting Mall was store #470. It's official address was 2300 Plymouth Meeting Mall. It opened with the mall. One of the people I worked with was the original grocery manager. You could enter the store directly from the outside or from inside the mall just like Cherry Hill and Colonial Park.
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Re: Acme and Philadelphia area shopping centers

Post by neil mcauliffe »

The FF/PP in the Cherry Hill Mall was located near Strawbridge and Clothier. I think after it closed it was a sporting goods store for awhile. With all of the reconfigurations that mall has gone through over the years it is hard for me to say where exactly it was today.

An interesting story about the Cherry Hill store. Whenever we converted a store from Food Fair to Pantry Pride the process would start at 6 pm on Saturday night (that was the normal closing time then for a FF) with the goal of a grand opening on Wednesday morning. Employees and managers from other stores were brought in to assist in the process. The process had started in Cherry Hill when the mall management showed up with a court order halting everything because the mall did not allow discount type stores and Pantry Pride advertised itself as discount foods. The conversion had to be cancelled. The company and the mall eventually worked out a deal and the store later converted to Pantry Pride.
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Re: Acme and Philadelphia area shopping centers

Post by MikeRa »

neil mcauliffe wrote:The FF/PP in the Cherry Hill Mall was located near Strawbridge and Clothier. I think after it closed it was a sporting goods store for awhile. With all of the reconfigurations that mall has gone through over the years it is hard for me to say where exactly it was today.

An interesting story about the Cherry Hill store. Whenever we converted a store from Food Fair to Pantry Pride the process would start at 6 pm on Saturday night (that was the normal closing time then for a FF) with the goal of a grand opening on Wednesday morning. Employees and managers from other stores were brought in to assist in the process. The process had started in Cherry Hill when the mall management showed up with a court order halting everything because the mall did not allow discount type stores and Pantry Pride advertised itself as discount foods. The conversion had to be cancelled. The company and the mall eventually worked out a deal and the store later converted to Pantry Pride.
The Cherry Hill Food Fair/Pantry Pride was demolished and replaced by the 2 floor mall section and JCPenney
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