The Market Report

Pemberton Farms Marketplace Opened : 1930 originally; late 1990s in this location Owner:  Tom Saidnawey Previous Tenants:  none Cooperative:  none Location:  2225 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA Photographed:  July 21, 2019 Welcome to Pemberton Farms! In the urban area of Cambridge, it might not feel like the prime spot for a farmstand. But Pemberton Farms is part farmstand, part gourmet grocer, part garden center. It's not an unusual format for a store -- we've seen several like it before -- but they're rarely in cities the way Pemberton Farms is. Pemberton Farms has been here in Cambridge since 1930 (although only in this building since the late 1990s), so it's definitely well-established in this area. The store is L-shaped, with more display area outside . The grand aisle is up in the front, with produce right at the front of the store and deli/bakery along the right-side wall. On the left side is meat along with a few short grocery aisles and the beer/wine...

Whole Foods Market Opened: 2003 Owner:  Amazon Previous Tenants:  Stop & Shop > Bread & Circus (opened by 1994, converted to Whole Foods in 2003) Cooperative:  none Location:  200 Alewife Brook Pkwy, Cambridge, MA Photographed:  July 27, 2019 Welcome to the Fresh Pond Mall! The Caldor Rainbow notes that this was never an indoor mall, but instead always strip mall. It appears to have been originally anchored by Zayre and Stop & Shop, which by 1994 had closed and Bread & Circus had opened up in the roughly 40,000 square feet. That said, I don't know for certain that the current Whole Foods was originally a Stop & Shop; that might've been elsewhere in the mall. Also as The Caldor Rainbow mentions, the Fresh Pond Mall is a bit rundown these days. The Whole Foods isn't in bad shape, but it's also very clearly an old building that doesn't appear to have gotten very much love over the years. Whole Foods refers to this location as Fresh Pond, wh...

Trader Joe's Opened: 2009 Owner:  Aldi Nord Previous Tenants:  A&P > ? > CVS Cooperative:  none Location:  211 Alewife Brook Pkwy, Cambridge, MA Photographed:  July 27, 2019 Today's Trader Joe's sure looks like any other Trader Joe's and doesn't seem particularly notable inside or outside. Don't be fooled: this 15,000 square foot store is actually built into part of a former A&P centennial. Constructed in the early 1960s by A&P, the space later was subdivided. By the mid-1980s, the right side had become a Heartland Drug, a chain that CVS later acquired. A Newbury Comics store was next to it in the other half of the former A&P. In 2009, CVS moved into the Newbury Comics space and expanded out the left side of the building, leaving space for Trader Joe's in part of the original A&P. Trader Joe's opened in 2009. The layout is pretty straightforward, with produce on the left side, dairy at the back, meat and cheese/deli in the back...