The Market Report

Big Y World Class Market Owner: D'Amour family Opened:  late 1980s Previous Tenants:  none Location:  1180 Thorndike St, Palmer, MA Photographed:  March 13, 2022 Today's snapshot is the supermarket here in Palmer, which is a roughly 52,000 square foot Big Y dating back to the late 1980s (by historic aerial photos we can see that the lot was cleared in 1985 but no construction had begun yet; the store was built and open by the next image in 1997). There's an Ocean State Job Lot, a Rhode Island-based chain of discount stores similar to Big Lots or Ollie's Bargain Outlet, across the parking lot from this supermarket, and that may have originally been a department store since I doubt Ocean State Job Lot built the store originally back in the 80s. Tomorrow is another Big Y, although it's an older one in a small town on our way east towards Worcester!

Original Grocery Tenant: unknown Address: 1047 Thorndike St, Palmer, MA Opened:  unknown Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  Rite Aid > Walgreens Photographed:  November 23, 2023 Our start to the West of Worcester group is sadly not that exciting. It's a roughly 16,000 square foot Walgreens that looks to me like a former supermarket, although I haven't been able to confirm that -- it's just what my intuition tells me. It certainly has the rough look of an A&P Centennial (and it's about the right size) but the building shape and setup just don't match anything like how A&P was building the centennials. Instead of being long and narrow or almost a perfect square, it's wider than it is deep. However, it does date back to roughly the centennial period (built between 1957 and 1967), but I'm willing to bet it's just a similar design coincidentally. We do know, though, that this was a Rite Aid before Walgreens, but that's not all that exciting. In...