The Market Report

Original Grocery Tenant: Ernest Shopwell Supermarket Address: 262 Main St, West Orange, NJ Opened: unknown Closed: ca. 1980 Later Tenants:  Tory Corner Market (ca. 1980-ca. 1990) > Rite Aid (early 1990s-2019) > Walgreens (2019-2024) Photographed: February 24, 2025 This somewhat unremarkable former Rite Aid/Walgreens in downtown West Orange, NJ is actually a former supermarket. I don't know the entire history here, but by around 1970, it was the Ernest Shopwell Supermarket (not apparently related to the Daitch/Shopwell chain of New York), and around 1980, it became the Tory Corner Market affiliated with Fine Fare. Rite Aid was open by the early 1990s. The store is just under 10,000 square feet, and has been vacant since Walgreens closed in 2024. So why bother looking at this store now? A proposal that's gone all but completely under the radar is to demolish the former Rite Aid building along with a vacant former diner next to it to build this new, two-floor supermarke...

West Orange Fooderie Owner: Shlomo Gornish Opened:  2022 Cooperative:  none (Krasdale supplied) Location:  629 Eagle Rock Ave, West Orange, NJ Photographed:  November 23, 2022 Our second Special Report of the day is here in West Orange, NJ, about six and a half miles outside of downtown Newark. The building at 629 Eagle Rock Avenue was built in 1953 as an ACME which closed in 1965, and by the 1990s, CVS had opened in the space. CVS built a new store down the street in 2014 and then closed this one in 2018, with Aron's West Orange Market opening that year (see more coverage of Aron's here ). It seemed that the store was poorly-run, and closed by 2021. In October 2022, the West Orange Fooderie Market opened up in the 8600 square foot space. They're clearly experiencing some growing pains, too, but with better management they may do better in the space. The area has a large Jewish (including Orthodox Jewish) community, and so it was surprising when Aron's -- the only k...

Original Tenant: ACME Markets Address: 629 Eagle Rock Ave, West Orange, NJ Opened:  1953 Closed:  1965 Later Tenants:  furniture store > CVS (1993-2018) > Aron's West Orange Market (2018-2021) Photographed:  July 2022 We return to this 8700 square foot building on Eagle Rock Avenue, just east of Pleasant Valley Way in the Pleasantdale section of West Orange. We first saw the store in 2018 (with some photos from 2016) showing Aron's West Orange Market in its soft opening phase, plus some older shots of the CVS that it replaced, then again in early 2019 when I got to visit it myself. I'm not entirely sure why, but Aron's operation was full of problems almost from the beginning. The beautiful displays that the original photoset captured were quickly gone replaced by empty spaces on all the shelves I noticed in my 2019 visit. I went back to pick up a gallon of milk in the summer of 2020 only to find the entire milk case empty, along with most of the bakery depa...

Whole Foods Market Opened:  ca. 2005 Previous Tenants:  Pathmark Location:  235 Prospect Ave, West Orange, NJ Photographed:  June & September 2016 and December 2020 In this unnamed shopping mall just up the street from the larger and busier Essex Green Mall, which contains West Orange's ShopRite , we find a rather odd combination of a Whole Foods and a Kmart (which closed in 2020). It makes a lot more sense when we learn that the 66,000 square foot junior anchor space was previously a Pathmark. The store underwent a renovation in late 2016, and I have a full tour from June 2016 before the renovation started along with some pictures from September 2016 when it was in progress. The renovation was fairly minor, replacing the decor that seemed perfectly fine to me with new decor that seems equally fine to me. We're going to tour the store, then revisit it in December of 2020 for post-remodel pictures. Okay, except for one thing that did re...