The Market Report

Original Tenant: Pantry Pride Address: 2497 Brunswick Pk, Lawrenceville, NJ Opened:  1960s Closed:  1979 Later Tenants:  ACME Markets (1979-2018) > LIDL (2021- ) Photographed:  January 2021 Another store I visited with bad timing! I was here at the Lawrenceville ACME about two years after it closed, and just a few months before LIDL opened. I managed to capture the store with its facade torn off, showing what I assumed to be not much of anything -- just some structural brick. Well it turns out that this space was originally built as a Pantry Pride which ACME acquired in 1979, and the brick we're seeing was Pantry Pride's original facade. Here's a look at what Pantry Pride would've looked like. I won't go into too much detail on ACME's history here since Acme Style has already done multiple posts on this location, but I'll just add that LIDL takes up roughly 28,000 square feet of space which appears to be exactly the footprint of the ACME. LIDL is open ...

Original Tenant: Risoldi's Thriftway Address: 3100 Quakerbridge Rd, Hamilton, NJ Opened:  1970s Closed:  2019 Later Tenants:  none Photographed:  January 2021 The roughly 40,000 square foot Risoldi's Market (a Great Valu store, previously Risoldi's Thriftway and before that, in a different location in town, the Liberty Thriftway) opened in the 1970s and closed in 2019 . So I was just about a year and a half too late to photograph it in business, but we do get to see inside. My interior pictures were a little limited because work was going on at the time and I was getting some strange looks from the construction workers. While I haven't heard anything about what might be going into the majority of the supermarket space, a ShopRite liquor store is taking about 10-20,000 square feet of the store. It was a good-looking exterior, but I've never seen an interior picture of the supermarket in business, and it's really hard to tell what the interior would've look...

Original Tenant: ACME Markets Address: 318 NJ-33, Mercerville, Hamilton, NJ Opened:  early 1960s Closed:  1993 Later Tenants:  Smith's Ace Hardware / Party Fair Photographed:  January 2021 The ACME of Mercerville, at NJ-33 and Quakerbridge Rd, opened in the late 1950s or early 1960s and closed in 1993 when the replacement store opened just east on NJ-33. I was not aware, by the way, when I visited, that the ACME was actually both  the Ace Hardware space and the neighboring Party Fair for a combined total of 25,000 square feet. It used to be more obvious before the facade renovation. It also looks like that facade renovation included an expansion of the Ace Hardware out to the left side, making me think that whole space was previously the ACME. I didn't go into the hardware store nor the Party Fair, but I doubt there are any ACME remnants inside either. At the east end of the strip mall was an A&P, later SuperFresh , which was constructed separately and t...

ACME Markets Opened: around 1993 Previous Tenants:  none Location:  953 NJ-33, Hamilton Square, Hamilton, NJ Photographed:  January 2021 I mentioned in yesterday's post that there were two supermarkets operating at Hamilton Square, an 82,000 square foot Saker ShopRite  and this 60,000 square foot ACME. This store opened in the early 1990s as a replacement for an older location just west which we'll be seeing tomorrow. While it was built with the 1990s red white and blue decor , the Hamilton Square ACME was remodeled around 2000 to an unusual decor package only seen in a few other Albertsons-owned stores. It was then remodeled again sometime around 2019-2020 to Quality Built, and while it looks nice, it's not that exciting. Not that the very bland prior decor package was that exciting either, but at least it was unique. This was my first 1990s-era "fortress" store, as they were referred to over on Acme Style, that I visited myself. I must say that they look much...

Original Tenant: Grand Union Address: 1750 Whitehorse Mercerville Rd, Hamilton, NJ Opened:  1970s Closed:  late 1980s Later Tenants:  Laurenti ShopRite (late 1980s-late 1990s) > Big V ShopRite (late 1990s-2002) Photographed:  January 2021 Well everybody, allow me to introduce one of the coolest abandoned supermarkets I've ever visited. This beauty of an eyesore takes up 33,000 square feet of a 63,000 square foot totally-abandoned strip mall on Whitehorse Mercerville Road in the Hamilton Square part of Hamilton Township. An additional 45,000 square feet next door -- likely previously a department store -- is now a self-storage facility (see before and after here). Google Maps caught the abandoned strip  after all the tenants closed but before the property was blocked off . I was able to wander in to this mall, which is all still supposed to be available retail space, for some very cool exclusive interior photos. (To my knowledge, no one else has gotten int...