Until Ortley Beach!
Location: 5 Ortley Plaza, Ortely Beach, NJ
Location: 5 Ortley Plaza, Ortely Beach, NJ
The much anticipated Ortley Beach Acme will arrive on the blog tomorrow. As most of you know, Acme had a 50's store on this property which A&P tore down to build their replacement store. The small building on the right side is A&P's original location. Acme's huge parking lot sign still stands at the corner of the parking lot which you can see in the lower left-hand corner. Photos have come in from 3 contributors so we'll be having very thorough look at this store.
This isn't just any old "future Acme" because it is soon to be an "Acme FUTURESTORE!"
ReplyDeleteFun fact: the first Futurestores were converted Kroger stores in the New Orleans division (which might be they remind one of the Kroger "Greenhouse" design). The Allendale one, I believe, was the first Futurestore in the northeast.
DeleteI am so excited for this post! My family has a house in Lavallette, so I went to the A&P often. It was my favorite A&P. I'm so glad that it's an acme now! Is this one of only 2 futurestores that acme bought? I love the look of the front, although a bit outdated, it still looks cool. I remember when I was younger, we would go to the A&P and the power would frequently go out. Man, that store gets dark! The only windows in the store are in the front, and they're tinted, plus the power outages usually happened at night, so it was PITCH black! That hasn't happened for quite a few years now. I can't wait to go see it in person! Also, my acme has finally finished with the reset. They finally put the aisle markers back up.
ReplyDeleteHi Milltown. What is the second futurestore that Acme bought? I thought Ortley Beach was the only one.
DeleteThis is going to be a very emotional post for us Acme enthusiasts. The era of Acme decadence is now over, and the supermarket is now rising like a Phoenix from the ashes. The Ortley Beach location is symbolic of this, not only because it used to be there, but also for how it helped normalize residents' lives after it reopened after Sandy. We are reliving the 50's and 60's in a way, when Acme was expanding on a large scale.
ReplyDeleteThank you directly to the Acme Style Blogger for teaching me so much about this segment of my local history that I otherwise would not have known about.
ACME will likely never get back to anything at its peak, at least under the ACME name. In 1990, it had 275 stores, and that was after pulling out of locations that would now be considered exotic for ACME (West Virginia, Buffalo NY). Would be cool if ACME sealed the gap between it and Shaw's, or more ambitiously, between it and Jewel-Osco. Sadly, all those would have to be acquisitions, as Albertsons/Safeway STILL isn't in a "build a new store in a new location from the ground up" mode yet.
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