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Re: Richmond, VA

Posted: 12 Dec 2005 09:06
by kg4peq
Dave wrote:Technically, before they renovated it, Willow Lawn wasn't a mall, but a large shopping center in a strip configuration. Originally, Giant Food was an anchor at one end, with JC Penney at the other. There was also a Safeway added later in a strange location at the rear of the center. The Giant is now Tower Records and the Safeway was torn down when they "malled" the center in the 1980's.

Azalea Mall was Richmond's first true mall. I can't remember if the grocery at Azalea opened into the mall or not (I don't think so).

Excuse me for being a curmudgeon, but I think of a "mall" as being an enclosed shoppping center. A "strip mall" is a condradiction in terms to me. Back in the late 1970's there seemed to have been a lot of shopping centers that used the mall name that weren't malls at all (Chippenham Mall and Beaufont Mall in Richmond immediately come to mind). I suppose that was to cash in on the trend of the times.

Now, of course, using the word "mall" in your name seems to be the kiss of death!
As I recall the grocery store at Azalea in fact did not have an entrance into the mall. Seems you could see inside the store through windows from the mall, but you had to enter from the outside. I do remember it being a Pantry Pride, but am going blank on what names it carried toward the end. I want to say it carried the Super Fresh banner at the end, and it seems it was a straight A&P briefly. Do you remember? I distinctly remember a lot of green in the store's color scheme.

Perhaps if I knew a little more about the history of Pantry Pride things might become clearer.

And I agree 100% with you on the "mall" terminology.

EDIT: Food Fair, then Pantry Pride, according to this. I don't remember there being a Home Shop (used to shop at the old Home Shop in Ashland quite often though).

Posted: 12 Dec 2005 10:56
by Steve Landry
Hello kg4...

Would you explain what your statement means?

"Pantry Pride spent a brief period sporting some of the A&P banners" :?:

Food Fair was the corporate parent of Pantry Pride. Pantry Pride was it's discount operation for a while. Later, after converting most of it's stores to Pantry Pride, they assumed the name for their corp I.D. and relocated their headquarters to Ft. Lauderdale FL. (Pantry Pride Inc.).

Posted: 12 Dec 2005 18:55
by Dave
I did a little memory refreshing through some old newspapers I happen to have. The Azalea Mall grocery was originally Food Fair, then Pantry Pride. I don't know what it "died" as, perhaps as Pantry Pride. The neighborhood A&P that was later SuperFresh was about a block away in the Brookhill-Azalea S.C., so I doubt seriously that the Azalea Mall store was ever an A&P/SuperFresh.

Anyway, sorry to get off of topic. I'll start a new thread on Richmond when I get time.

Safeway in Corte Madera Town Center Mall

Posted: 17 Dec 2005 21:24
by storeliker
Marin County only has three malls, two which are court yard type of malls (since it is California) and Northgate a mall with 2 annexes one which has a larger Safeway and Northgate 2 a smaller Albertsons that opened in 67 but went out of business a few years ago and became a Michaels crafts.
The Safeway at Corte Madera Town Center says serving since 1986 but the mall itself is much older pre 1965 I know. It hasnt been remodeled yet but got its Starbucks. The S of Serving is missing so assume it will be remodeled since it is a newer store. This mall has been made over many times thru the years and the newer mall across the freeway from the eighties is getting a renovation. I doubt Safeway was another grocery before 1986 but could have been. It also has another grocery store in this mall a very small grocery called Bryans Fine Foods which pretty much sells just high quality meats, fruit and veggies and breads.

Posted: 29 Dec 2005 03:25
by Edric Floyd
I do remember there definitely was a couple Pantry Pride's in South Florida WITH direct Mall entrances. One was in the North Miami Beach area and later became a toy store. But my family used to frequent LAKES MALL in Lauderdale Lakes, FL in the 1970's. It had a Pantry Pride with entrances on the exterior AND sliding glass doors in front of the checkout area that opened into the Mall itself. This section of the mall was also a Mall entrance and next to the Jefferson's (aka Jefferson Ward) department store. I remember the Pantry Pride logo sign was on a wall NEXT to the windows of the store inside the mall instead of ABOVE the entrance like the other mall stores.

In the 1980's the mall began to decline. The Pantry Pride became OFFICE DEPOT STORE #1 and the Jefferson's next to it became a Sports Authority.

Re: Grocers in "real" malls - not strip malls

Posted: 25 Apr 2006 10:07
by benroethig
Groceteria wrote:This was one of the more active and interesting threads on the old message board and I've reposted it here so we can continue with it:

Posted by luvgrocerystores on 11/3/2005, 1:40 am
Sentry in Hilldale Mall, Madison, WI. There might still be some sort of grocer in that mall altho I think the Sentry chain is defunct. Last time I was there, about a year ago, we didn't go to that end of the mall.
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Sentry is still alive and well. Kohl's foods, (same founder as the department store) died out. Sentry picked up a couple of their stores. The Sentry is one of the main pieces in the mall's transformation into a mixed use lifestyle center.

I would also like to add one to the list. The Cedar Falls, Iowa Hy-vee is moving from an outlot next to College square mall to 80,000 square feet of the old walmart anchor. The other 20,000 square feet will have direct mall access and I wouldn't be surprised if a Borders ended up there.

Posted: 25 Apr 2006 11:22
by BillyGr
A couple of malls in the Albany area had Price Choppers - Mohawk Mall (Niskayuna, near Schenectady) and Clifton Country Mall.

The Mohawk one closed when they opened a super store further down Central Ave - of course they just recently opened a new store in the (now redone Mohawk Commons) - a kind of confusing plaza with separate buildings everywhere.

The Clifton Park store was closed when they built a newer store across Route 146.

As far as I know, none of the other malls here had a grocery in the mall proper (Latham Circle may have - they later had a Grand Union in a separate building on the mall property - of course that mall started as a open center and was later enclosed).

Posted: 29 Apr 2006 02:07
by rrr
Yup, Sentry does seem to be limping along, altho I've noticed that a lot of them are now Soandso's Sentry which was not the case years ago. In particular, the Hilldale store is now Metcalfe's Sentry where it was just Sentry in the old days. Also, and more important, their Crestwood bakery brand no longer exists.

Re: Supermarkets in Malls

Posted: 01 May 2006 16:47
by TheQuestioner
rich wrote:...Sometimes they survived malling, like the super markets at Westgate in Cleveland (although one moved to an outparcel) or the Grand Union that was at Prince George's Plaza..
I'm guessing that this reference is to Prince George's Plaza in Hyattsville MD, since it's kind of a unique name. At what point did PG Plaza have a Grand Union? I first visited PG Plaza in the late 70's and don't recall any GU. My guess would be that it was in the portion of the mall at the western end that was Kids R Us. I recall Kids R Us opening (I think it must have been one of the first, if not THE first, locations of that chain) but I can't recall what preceded it in that space. My memory is so foggy that for all I know the KRU store was an addition to the existing mall.

There's one other thing I have long wondered about PG Plaza that someone here might know: In the back of the mall, at the far end of the parcel, there's an auto center that has gone by different names over the years. Normally these kind of centers were related to an anchor that inhabits the main mall. In this case, the mall anchors were (and always were I'm pretty sure) Woodward & Lothrop and Hechts. Until the late 80's the Hechts even had their 50's-era logo on the back of the store facing the auto center. The building itself is kind of near Hechts. However, neither of those chains ever had auto centers as far as I know. I have never seen one located near any of their other locations. Any ideas?

Posted: 02 Jul 2006 02:57
by javelin
Grocery stores inside malls are quite common in Europe. In Ireland, they're usually anchored with a Penney's (same spelling, no relation to the US JC Penney).

The Stonewood mall in Downey, CA had an Albertson's. The main anchor was a JC Penney.

Davis, CA

Posted: 16 Jul 2006 00:33
by J-Man
When I was attending college in Davis, CA in the early 70s, there was a Safeway and a Pay-and-Save in University Mall, a small indoor mall that also housed Lawrence's, a small department store. The Safeway left, and a local independent, State Market moved in. Apparently that space now houses a Cost Plus World Market. I believe the Pay-and-Save became a PayLess, and it's now a RiteAid. There's now a small Gottschalk's department store in the mall.

Posted: 16 Jul 2006 02:13
by danielh_512
As someone stated before about Parole Plaza, it is/was not in Bowie, but in Parole, a small suburb of Annapolis in Anne Arundel County about 20 minutes from Bowie.

The Free State Mall was in Bowie, and had a Giant that had mall access, until replaced by a newer freestanding store.

Beltway Plaza in Greenbelt right across the PG County line has a Giant that can only be accessed by the mall to this day. You enter a mall entrance, and the entrance for Giant is straight back from there.

Posted: 20 Jul 2006 15:06
by Chris322
The Quintard Mall in Oxford, AL had a Kroger inside of it in the early 1970s. It had no outside door and was fully enclosed, however, it was located right next to the mall entrance. It closed when Food World opened in 1972.

Posted: 20 Jul 2006 16:37
by rich
Re: Upthread--PG Plaza had a Grand Union in the early 70s. It was a relatively large store for that era. I don't recall which end of the center. Probably the West, as I think Murphy's was the end store for the east.

Hecht's, like most of the May chains, had auto centers. They started out as "Falcon Fiesta" tire dealers, Falcon being a Firestone brand that was used for these kinds of stores.

Re: Grocers in "real" malls - not strip malls

Posted: 30 Sep 2006 16:05
by Badgerinmaine
Groceteria wrote:This was one of the more active and interesting threads on the old message board and I've reposted it here so we can continue with it:

Posted by luvgrocerystores on 11/3/2005, 1:40 am

Way back when it seems like some "real" indoor malls had grocery stores. I guess the idea was that you could do all your shopping without moving your car. And maybe mall rents were relatively cheaper then?

A couple examples I recall:

ValueMarket in Bashford Manor Mall here in Louisville, closed around 2001, Bashford Manor torn down and replaced by SuperWalmart about a year ago.

Sentry in Hilldale Mall, Madison, WI. There might still be some sort of grocer in that mall altho I think the Sentry chain is defunct. Last time I was there, about a year ago, we didn't go to that end of the mall.

[/b]
That store is very, very much alive and well, and prospering. It now is one of a few Sentrys that are owned by the Metcalf family, which now places their own name larger than the Sentry. Sentry is smaller than it used to be, and I don't know if any of their old SuperSaver stores still exist, but they are also very much still alive: http://www.sentryfoods.com/
In the 1970s, that Sentry at Hilldale was an A&P until the A&P brand pulled out of Wisconsin (though they later bought the Kohl's grocery chain).

As for Hilldale Mall, it's become astonishingly posh. There are now apartment/condo complexes and multiple level parking ramps on site, and it is fancier than it has ever been:
http://www.hilldale.com/