Grocers in "real" malls - not strip malls
Posted: 07 Nov 2005 16:28
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.
Rainbow in Terrace Mall, Minneapolis, MN. Other anchor was a Monkey Ward. This mall changed over to a strip mall around 1995.
Posted by Neel on 11/3/2005, 2:28 am
There is a Pavillions (safeway) supermarket in the Westside Pavillion mall in West Los Angeles. I always thought it was cool to have a grocery store alongside Foot Locker, Macy's, and Bath and Body Works.
In Australia, it is very common for an indoor mall to have Big W (wal-mart ripoff), K-mart, Woolworths grocery store, Post Office and Public Library.
Posted by jamcool on 11/3/2005, 1:20 pm
In Phoenix we had Maryvale Shopping City. It not only had a Wards, a Sears catalog store, and a Kresges, but it had 2 Supermarkets and 2 Drugstores. on one side was an El Rancho and a Revco, while on the other side was a Fry's and an old-fashioned Walgreens (with fountain!), of which both stores shared the same entrance - it was an air-cooled walkway with Fry's on one side and Wag's on the other.
Posted by TheQuestioner on 11/3/2005, 4:15 pm
I recall seeing grocery stores attached to malls in the DC area. In Wheaton MD there was a Giant built onto Wheaton Plaza, which was an outdoor-type 50's mall and made indoor in the late 70's. The Giant did not have mall access but it's entrance was right next to a mall entrance.
I saw on one of these message boards that Parole Plaza mall in Bowie Md. had a Food Fair, so the practice seems to be rather common for 1950's-1960's era malls. Malls from that time also seemed to have at least one drug store and one 5-10. Wheaton Plaza had a People's Drug and I believe a Kresge as well. Many malls had Woolworths.
I think the mall was a pretty new concept at that point, and they were still figuring out what types of businesses complemented each other. By the 1970's, it seems like they decided that grocery stores being attached to malls made little sense. 70's and 80's malls seemed to be more about having 3 or 4 strong anchors with a mix of food, clothes and amusements such as music stores, theaters, and arcades. Most of these businesses were more "upscale" and were all about discretionary spending, not errand-based shopping for necessities.
Now we have stores that try to do it all like Wal-Mart and Target. Frankly, I preferred having stores that had core strengths they focused on, rather then a big box that is average at everything and masterful of nothing. I miss places like Woolworths and Kresge for the "I just need to pick up a..." type of errand. In the transition from malls to freestanding big boxes, the grocery stores may stage a comeback. With so many disparate elements clustered together, there might as well be groceries (that is if a Wal-Mart isn't already there) The Wheaton Plaza Giant store was torn down (along with an entire wing of the mall which it was the endpiece of) to make way for Macys, and they built a new freestanding Giant in the area that was once their own parking lot. I wouldn't be surprised to see it still there in 15 years, by which time Wheaton Plaza will have probably be de-malled and semi-reverted to what it once was, an outdoor shopping center with an odd mix of stores. Sunrise, sunset...
Posted by tesg on 11/3/2005, 8:40 pm
The Beaverton Mall in my hometown of Beaverton, OR, had a supermarket as an anchor. In the seventies, the flow as you walked north up the corridor took you past Scamp's pet store, then Payless Drug, then Troy's fish market, then you were in the supermarket. It was just sort of like...there you were. No official entrance, really.
As the mall expanded, Cub Foods, now known in the Northwest as WinCo Foods, took over the space and built a new monster of a store sometime in the mid 80's, I think.
WinCo has no mall access. Actually, the whole north corridor of the mall has long since disappeared in favor of big box operations, including Best Buy. It's not even called "Beaverton Mall" anymore. It's now known as "Cedar Hills Crossing".
The Dixie Square Mall in Harvey, Illinois, one of the most famous "dead malls" out there (closed in 1979...was the mall in the "Blues Brothers"), had a Jewell store as an anchor.
We have a Fareway with mall access anchoring a small, older local mall. It's really not much of a mall anymore...the DMV takes up a significant amount of the retail space anymore...but it's still operating as a mall.
Posted by Toby Radloff on 11/3/2005, 10:57 pm
Back in the 1960's/early 1970's Richmond Mall (Richmond Heights, OH), Chapel Hill Mall (Akron), Westgate Mall (Fairview Park), and Great Lakes Mall (Mentor) all had Krogers. Fisher Foods (aka Fazio's) had a store at Severance Center (Cleveland Heights)...in the mid-1980's the Fazio's was demolished and replaced with a Finast (now Tops). Westgate and Parmatown malls had Pick-N-Pay's, and there used to be an A&P in the Parmatown strip next door to the mall. I think Great Lakes Mall also had a Fazio's, but don't remember offhand. But back in the early 1960's, both Great Lakes and Westgate malls were open-air malls that were later enclosed.
Posted by David on 11/3/2005, 11:42 pm
I remember one in Billings, MT (at least in 2000) there was a Smith's (former Albertsons) on the old mall on Grand Ave. Of course this might be going bye bye if Kroger and Albertsons merge.
Posted by storewanderer on 11/4/2005, 12:17 am
Both Smiths in Billings have closed.
Posted by JamesSF on 11/4/2005, 12:59 am
Hilltop Mall on top of a hill overlooking San Francisco in Richmond had an Albertsons in its complex that has since closed. Also The Macys moved to the old Emporium laying vacant for years with talks if it becoming a Target (Target is a trend in Bay area malls now) Also besides the now defunct Albertsons on the south side there was another grocery store next door to the closed down drug store on the west side of mall. I'm not sure when this mall complex was built(67??) but there are banks and old furniture shops adjacent that are churches and also alot of closed things around it, but they are now going through a renewal
Posted by Spike on 11/5/2005, 1:36 pm
At Northgate Mall in Seattle, there was a QFC. You had to go down a hallway to get into the store, it was sort of turned sideways. It has since moved a mile away, and the space is now the food court.
In Denver, the old Wards store at Lakeside Mall is now an Avanza grocery store. There is no mall access, but you can look through some windows in the bakery area into the mall. I wonder why they did that.
In the 80s, there seemed to be a trend of putting store-like operations in department stores, to copy an operation at Macy's. Frederick & Nelson in Seattle redid their basement to include a food store, along with the book area, greeting cards, and various other operations. IT was called The Arcade. In theory, you could do quite a bit of your grocery shopping down there. It was quite the rage when it first opened, but it lost its luster quickly, and the food offerings were shrunk sooner than other stuff down there. That chain went bankrupt in the 80s or 90s, and the main store in downtown Seattle is now the Nordstrom flagship store.
Posted by Marshall on 11/5/2005, 3:54 pm
Southcenter Mall in Tukwila, WA and Tacoma Mall both had Lucky Stores. Southcenter had a Pay 'n Save across from Lucky and Tacoma Mall had PayLess Drug of Tacoma (not Payless NW) across from Lucky.
Talking about department stores with food, Woodward's department stores in Western Canada had full supermarkets as part of their stores. They were called, "Woodward's Famous Food Floors". This chain is now defunct. Before they went under, many of the food floors were leased to Safeway.[/b]
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.
Rainbow in Terrace Mall, Minneapolis, MN. Other anchor was a Monkey Ward. This mall changed over to a strip mall around 1995.
Posted by Neel on 11/3/2005, 2:28 am
There is a Pavillions (safeway) supermarket in the Westside Pavillion mall in West Los Angeles. I always thought it was cool to have a grocery store alongside Foot Locker, Macy's, and Bath and Body Works.
In Australia, it is very common for an indoor mall to have Big W (wal-mart ripoff), K-mart, Woolworths grocery store, Post Office and Public Library.
Posted by jamcool on 11/3/2005, 1:20 pm
In Phoenix we had Maryvale Shopping City. It not only had a Wards, a Sears catalog store, and a Kresges, but it had 2 Supermarkets and 2 Drugstores. on one side was an El Rancho and a Revco, while on the other side was a Fry's and an old-fashioned Walgreens (with fountain!), of which both stores shared the same entrance - it was an air-cooled walkway with Fry's on one side and Wag's on the other.
Posted by TheQuestioner on 11/3/2005, 4:15 pm
I recall seeing grocery stores attached to malls in the DC area. In Wheaton MD there was a Giant built onto Wheaton Plaza, which was an outdoor-type 50's mall and made indoor in the late 70's. The Giant did not have mall access but it's entrance was right next to a mall entrance.
I saw on one of these message boards that Parole Plaza mall in Bowie Md. had a Food Fair, so the practice seems to be rather common for 1950's-1960's era malls. Malls from that time also seemed to have at least one drug store and one 5-10. Wheaton Plaza had a People's Drug and I believe a Kresge as well. Many malls had Woolworths.
I think the mall was a pretty new concept at that point, and they were still figuring out what types of businesses complemented each other. By the 1970's, it seems like they decided that grocery stores being attached to malls made little sense. 70's and 80's malls seemed to be more about having 3 or 4 strong anchors with a mix of food, clothes and amusements such as music stores, theaters, and arcades. Most of these businesses were more "upscale" and were all about discretionary spending, not errand-based shopping for necessities.
Now we have stores that try to do it all like Wal-Mart and Target. Frankly, I preferred having stores that had core strengths they focused on, rather then a big box that is average at everything and masterful of nothing. I miss places like Woolworths and Kresge for the "I just need to pick up a..." type of errand. In the transition from malls to freestanding big boxes, the grocery stores may stage a comeback. With so many disparate elements clustered together, there might as well be groceries (that is if a Wal-Mart isn't already there) The Wheaton Plaza Giant store was torn down (along with an entire wing of the mall which it was the endpiece of) to make way for Macys, and they built a new freestanding Giant in the area that was once their own parking lot. I wouldn't be surprised to see it still there in 15 years, by which time Wheaton Plaza will have probably be de-malled and semi-reverted to what it once was, an outdoor shopping center with an odd mix of stores. Sunrise, sunset...
Posted by tesg on 11/3/2005, 8:40 pm
The Beaverton Mall in my hometown of Beaverton, OR, had a supermarket as an anchor. In the seventies, the flow as you walked north up the corridor took you past Scamp's pet store, then Payless Drug, then Troy's fish market, then you were in the supermarket. It was just sort of like...there you were. No official entrance, really.
As the mall expanded, Cub Foods, now known in the Northwest as WinCo Foods, took over the space and built a new monster of a store sometime in the mid 80's, I think.
WinCo has no mall access. Actually, the whole north corridor of the mall has long since disappeared in favor of big box operations, including Best Buy. It's not even called "Beaverton Mall" anymore. It's now known as "Cedar Hills Crossing".
The Dixie Square Mall in Harvey, Illinois, one of the most famous "dead malls" out there (closed in 1979...was the mall in the "Blues Brothers"), had a Jewell store as an anchor.
We have a Fareway with mall access anchoring a small, older local mall. It's really not much of a mall anymore...the DMV takes up a significant amount of the retail space anymore...but it's still operating as a mall.
Posted by Toby Radloff on 11/3/2005, 10:57 pm
Back in the 1960's/early 1970's Richmond Mall (Richmond Heights, OH), Chapel Hill Mall (Akron), Westgate Mall (Fairview Park), and Great Lakes Mall (Mentor) all had Krogers. Fisher Foods (aka Fazio's) had a store at Severance Center (Cleveland Heights)...in the mid-1980's the Fazio's was demolished and replaced with a Finast (now Tops). Westgate and Parmatown malls had Pick-N-Pay's, and there used to be an A&P in the Parmatown strip next door to the mall. I think Great Lakes Mall also had a Fazio's, but don't remember offhand. But back in the early 1960's, both Great Lakes and Westgate malls were open-air malls that were later enclosed.
Posted by David on 11/3/2005, 11:42 pm
I remember one in Billings, MT (at least in 2000) there was a Smith's (former Albertsons) on the old mall on Grand Ave. Of course this might be going bye bye if Kroger and Albertsons merge.
Posted by storewanderer on 11/4/2005, 12:17 am
Both Smiths in Billings have closed.
Posted by JamesSF on 11/4/2005, 12:59 am
Hilltop Mall on top of a hill overlooking San Francisco in Richmond had an Albertsons in its complex that has since closed. Also The Macys moved to the old Emporium laying vacant for years with talks if it becoming a Target (Target is a trend in Bay area malls now) Also besides the now defunct Albertsons on the south side there was another grocery store next door to the closed down drug store on the west side of mall. I'm not sure when this mall complex was built(67??) but there are banks and old furniture shops adjacent that are churches and also alot of closed things around it, but they are now going through a renewal
Posted by Spike on 11/5/2005, 1:36 pm
At Northgate Mall in Seattle, there was a QFC. You had to go down a hallway to get into the store, it was sort of turned sideways. It has since moved a mile away, and the space is now the food court.
In Denver, the old Wards store at Lakeside Mall is now an Avanza grocery store. There is no mall access, but you can look through some windows in the bakery area into the mall. I wonder why they did that.
In the 80s, there seemed to be a trend of putting store-like operations in department stores, to copy an operation at Macy's. Frederick & Nelson in Seattle redid their basement to include a food store, along with the book area, greeting cards, and various other operations. IT was called The Arcade. In theory, you could do quite a bit of your grocery shopping down there. It was quite the rage when it first opened, but it lost its luster quickly, and the food offerings were shrunk sooner than other stuff down there. That chain went bankrupt in the 80s or 90s, and the main store in downtown Seattle is now the Nordstrom flagship store.
Posted by Marshall on 11/5/2005, 3:54 pm
Southcenter Mall in Tukwila, WA and Tacoma Mall both had Lucky Stores. Southcenter had a Pay 'n Save across from Lucky and Tacoma Mall had PayLess Drug of Tacoma (not Payless NW) across from Lucky.
Talking about department stores with food, Woodward's department stores in Western Canada had full supermarkets as part of their stores. They were called, "Woodward's Famous Food Floors". This chain is now defunct. Before they went under, many of the food floors were leased to Safeway.[/b]