The Market Report

Stop & Shop Opened:  2003 Previous Tenants:  none Location:  1511 US-22, Watchung, NJ Photographed:  July 2020 It's time for the final store tour of the Plainfield group! It feels like this group has gone on forever but it's been only like two weeks, so it's probably just that it's taken me a very long time to write these stores. Plus, there are a lot of them -- there were a lot of days with two posts! The assortment of stores at the gigantic Watchung Square Mall is just so absurd that I had to get a picture of the monument sign. A Target and  a Walmart, a Home Depot, a Stop & Shop, appliances, home goods, clothing, enough shoe stores to put shoes on everyone's feet in Somerset County. (Oh, by the way, we are in Somerset County here. Plainfield is Union but everything surrounding it except Scotch Plains and Fanwood to the northeast is Somerset County.) We enter to find the average Super Stop & Shop layout with the grand aisle on the left. Produce is ...

Original Tenant: ShopRite Address: 1220 South Ave, Plainfield, NJ Opened:  1961 Closed:  1968 Later Tenants:  Pathmark (1968-1980s) > Walgreens (1986-2001) > Times Farmers Market (??-ca. 2014) > Green Farmers Market (ca. 2014-2016) > Key Food Supermarkets (2016) > Fig Tree Market (2017-2019) Photographed:  July 2020 We're returning to 1220 South Ave here at the northern end of Plainfield, outside of downtown. The 16,000 square foot space has hosted no fewer than six different grocery stores during its 60 year life, and possibly more since I'm not sure what, if anything, was in here between Walgreens and Times Farm. I'm not sure whether it was related to Times Farm in Union . It seems that Fig Tree lasted a little less than two years, making it the second-shortest-lived store on this property behind Key Food . The entire property is slated for redevelopment now. It's always very sad to see the "now open" signage still up after the store closes f...

Fine Fare Supermarkets Owner: unknown Opened:  ca. 2013 Previous Tenants:  Safeway > Finast > Foodtown > Drug Fair Cooperative:  Retail Grocers Group Location:  1479 South Ave, Plainfield, NJ Photographed:  July 2018 and July 2020 We are outside of downtown here in Plainfield for our last Plainfield store! The 15,000 square foot store is about half of an arched-roof Safeway, later Finast and Foodtown, which was then subdivided into a video store and a Drug Fair, each taking half of the store. (The store runs along South Avenue, with a parking lot at either end, so it's natural that it would just be split down the middle.) The video store became a beauty supply store, and Drug Fair closed in 2007. In 2010, a CTown Supermarket opened up shop in the former Drug Fair space, which around 2013 was switched over to Fine Fare. This Fine Fare, which strikes me as a very well-run supermarket, is likely a key reason that the Fig Tree Market (and its assorted pr...