The Market Report

Doscher's IGA Owner:  Johnny Doscher III Opened:  1974-2022 Cooperative:  IGA Location:  1133 Savannah Hwy, West Ashley, Charleston, SC Photographed:  June 2022 Contributor:  Carlton Swift We are returning to Charleston, South Carolina for an update at Doscher's IGA, which we saw in a tour not too long ago. I haven't been back to Charleston since my initial visit in January 2022, but our contributor Carlton Swift who lives in the area was able to capture Doscher's during its store closure on its final days. The store is set to be demolished for a residential development. Carlton gives us some information on the store itself too: A&P opened in 1963 as a Centennial and closed in 1974. Doscher's opened the same year. The store was expanded to its current size and shape in 2003. We'll see where the building originally ended. Interestingly enough, that means the facade we see here was actually constructed in 2003 and is not an original Centennial facade. Th...

Earth Fare Opened: July 2020 Previous Tenants:  A&P > Earth Fare (closed February 2020) Location:  74 Folly Rd Blvd, West Ashley, Charleston, SC Photographed:  January 2022 Yesterday we saw a former A&P that's since become an IGA, about three and a half miles outside of downtown Charleston on route 17. We are about two miles outside of downtown here, where routes 17 and 171 (Savannah Hwy and Folly Rd Blvd) come togethr to see another former A&P. This Earth Fare takes up the former A&P along with the former Walgreens next to it, as we see in this historical photo . Based on the store model, I'd wager a bet that this was a pre-Centennial store, probably of the same era as the Doscher's, but was never converted to the Centennial format. And it still has a tower! The combined A&P and Walgreens spaces add up to just under 25,000 square feet. We enter on the right side, in the former Walgreens space, to produce in the front right corner and bulk foods, ...

Whole Foods Market Opened: 2018 Previous Tenants:  none Location:  1125 Savannah Hwy, West Ashley, Charleston, SC Photographed:  January 2022 This, folks, is a world-record store. Or at least I'm pretty sure it was -- for fastest store tour ever photographed. It took me exactly five and a half minutes to capture a full store tour and use the bathroom in this store. Mostly because I had family members (who I'd already dragged to Doscher's , which they admitted was an interesting store) with me, and we were only here to use the bathroom while passing through. But let's backtrack for a minute. A&P built a store in this strip mall back in the 50s or early 60s, which was expanded to a Centennial in the late 60s or early 70s. In 1974, it became Doscher's IGA, which has continued operating but is closing this month. Whole Foods opened here in 2018, and politely coexisted with Doscher's for four years. At 43,000 square feet, this Whole Foods is much larger than Dos...