The Market Report

Original Tenant:  Mayfair Foodtown Address: 52-56 Westfield Ave, Clark, NJ Opened:  unknown Closed:  1989 Later Tenants:  A&P (1989-2006) Photographed:  December 2020 Quite the relic here in downtown Clark. This 24,000 square foot building was built as a Mayfair Foodtown, later being sold to A&P in 1989. A&P, in turn, moved a little over a mile northwest to the location that's now ACME in 2006. Since then, the space has remained vacant, with A&P even holding on to the lease until 2012. The township, then, condemned the space in 2018 with plans to forcibly acquire the store by eminent domain, although I'm not sure where those plans stand now. As much as a retail relic like this excites me, I also understand it's quite the eyesore in a downtown location. The building's exterior has deteriorated extensively over the years, with paint peeling and mold forming around the walls. I believe the panels above the doors here are something to do with vent...

ShopRite of Clark Owner:  ShopRite Supermarkets, Inc. Opened:  1990s Previous Tenants:  none Cooperative:  Wakefern Food Corp. Location:  76 Central Ave, Clark, NJ Photographed:  June 2020 A store I've been to many times but only photographed recently, the 70,000 square foot ShopRite of Clark is one of the highest-volume stores in the area. It's always crowded, and it's very nicely renovated. It's one of only three ShopRites in New Jersey owned corporately by ShopRite Supermarkets (SRS), the other two being Spotswood and Montague -- meaning it's one of the best-run supermarkets around. Previously, the store was located diagonally across the street in a former ACME . Clark also has a newly built Whole Foods in the property just behind this, and an ACME in a former A&P about a half a mile west. Moving a little farther out, there's a still-vacant former A&P that the now-ACME store replaced. That's where we'll be heading up next...

Kings Food Markets Opened: 1982 Previous Tenants:  Stop & Shop Location:  300 South Ave, Garwood, NJ Photographed:  November 2020 Like many of our other Kings tours, this one was photographed in the last week of November 2020 just weeks before the ownership was turned over to ACME Markets. This Garwood store, however, is a bit different in feeling than the rest of the Kings stores we saw. The 31,000 square foot store is on the larger side for Kings, and was built as a Stop & Shop back in the 1960s when the chain first entered the New Jersey market, with Kings taking over in 1982. The store itself was a much more "city" feeling supermarket than most of the Kings, with the rest of the mall being more urban in style than most of the Kings' properties. The area, with multi-level housing and light industrial along South Avenue, actually feels much more like the area where the ShopRite in Elizabeth is -- and by the way, that store is about four and a half miles east ...

ACME Markets Opened: 2015 Previous Tenants:  A&P Location:  801 Kenilworth Blvd, Kenilworth, NJ Photographed:  May 2016, May 2020, June 2020, November 2020, and February 2021 Today we're touring the ACME in Kenilworth, which was my local store for about 6 years back when it was an A&P until about 2006. Then, beginning in March 2020, this became my weekly shopping store again. So I know this one pretty well! The store opened as an A&P in the 90s, probably as a Sav-A-Center, being remodeled to Fresh 2.0 in the mid-2000s (see here ). It was supposed to be a replacement for the nearby Union store , an expanded Centennial, which lasted until the early 2000s due to its proximity to public senior housing. ACME took over in November 2015, with the Quality Built renovation bringing new decor and some new fixtures in spring 2016. I took the following pictures to send in to Acme Style for coverage of the store. The 66,000 square foot store has two entrances, one here (...