Special Report: 262 Main St, West Orange, NJ

Original Grocery Tenant: Ernest Shopwell Supermarket
Address: 262 Main St, West Orange, NJ

Opened: unknown

Closed: ca. 1980

Later Tenants: Tory Corner Market (ca. 1980-ca. 1990) > Rite Aid (early 1990s-2019) > Walgreens (2019-2024)

Photographed: February 24, 2025

This somewhat unremarkable former Rite Aid/Walgreens in downtown West Orange, NJ is actually a former supermarket. I don't know the entire history here, but by around 1970, it was the Ernest Shopwell Supermarket (not apparently related to the Daitch/Shopwell chain of New York), and around 1980, it became the Tory Corner Market affiliated with Fine Fare. Rite Aid was open by the early 1990s. The store is just under 10,000 square feet, and has been vacant since Walgreens closed in 2024. So why bother looking at this store now?

A proposal that's gone all but completely under the radar is to demolish the former Rite Aid building along with a vacant former diner next to it to build this new, two-floor supermarket. According to plans submitted to the planning board (via Township of West Orange, and that's also where these renderings are from), the proposal is to build a roughly 15,000 square foot supermarket with a parking lot and an additional 5,000 square feet on the second floor. Given that this is just an application, there's no guarantee it'll even happen, much less a timeline yet.

Some further interesting details can be gleaned from the application to the township. For one, the store will be called Leon Marketplace, which is also the name of another store under construction in West New York. The owners are identified as members of the Siad family, and the corporate address is that of the recently-closed Fresh n Save Marketplace in Woodside (it's been replaced by a brand-new Key Food, and you can see both stores here). So that potentially ties the two in-progress Leon Marketplace stores to existing Fresh n Save and Key Food stores. Members of the Zariyeh family also co-own some or all of those stores, along with Windsor Farms locations in Brooklyn. So there's quite the small dynasty here, just spread across multiple family members and multiple store names.

While we happen to be in this area, let's talk about some other upcoming projects within a couple miles of this store. About six miles west in East Hanover, a 12,000 square foot former Party City at NJ-10 and River Road is slated to become a supermarket, though there's not yet any public indication of what supermarket specifically it'll be. Here in West Orange, a Trader Joe's is preparing to open in a former garden center that is itself in a former A&P. That's across town, about two miles west and also on NJ-10. And about two miles east, another new-build, approximately 20,000 square foot supermarket is slated to come to the corner of Springdale Ave and N Grove St in East Orange, though public records there don't indicate what brand it'll be.

That's a lot of activity for a borderline urban/suburban part of the western suburbs of Newark that doesn't tend to get much excitement supermarket-wise (except for the new ShopRite in East Orange, I suppose). I'll keep my eye on these developments as they progress!