Location: 3010 NJ-35, Hazlet, NJ
Two retail giants now decimated and abandoned. It's a bizarre site to see for this life-long New Jersyan. The photos you're seeing here today were taken back in March of this year. At the time, the Pathmark had yet to be cleared out after shutting down in November 2015. Kmart bailed in October 2016.
I've been in the Hazlet Kmart a handful of times over the past few years. Always found it be fairly busy. I wonder if the closing had more to do with an expiring lease than declining business. In 2013, ShopRite opened a new store in the shopping center next door which certainly impacted both the Kmart and Pathmark.
The Hazlet Pathmark survived until the bitter end. The employees were laid off on Thanksgiving Day 2015.
The interior is completely intact. Just need some food to reopen the joint!
Why didn't A&P try to sell any of this equipment? Didn't they do that at other locations? Is the landlord now responsible for cleaning all this out? So many questions. I guess when a company goes bankrupt, they can just up and walk away from everything.
Looks like the self-checkout attendant didn't get to finish their lunch before the store shut down! The place must absolutely stink inside.
Always loved Pathmark's shelf-checkouts! In and out in a flash. Something that never happens at Acme.
The shopping center has been bought by Onyx Equities. No information online as to the planned redevelopment. The stores shown on this sign are Home Plus and Go Fresh. Totally fake.
AERIAL VIEWS
Business was going strong when this aerial image was taken! I don't know the last time I saw a crowd like that at a Kmart. Maybe in the 70's? The Kmart does have an updated sign so it couldn't have been too long ago.
ShopRite took over the former space of a short-lived Foodtown and Children's Wear store. This new location was a replacement for their old-school store a couple miles away on Route 36.
Location: 1030 State Route 36 Hazlet, NJ
The former Hazlet ShopRite. Remember the days when nearly every ShopRite was an absolute dump? Pretty amazing how they turned things around. The relocation of this store dealt a devastaing blow to both the Hazlet Pathmark and Holmdel A&P Fresh.
HISTORIC AERIALS
2012
2006
2002
1995
1979
1972
1970
It's odd to drive by this enormous shopping center and see so few cars in the lot. It seems that a company purchased it but hasn't figured out what to do with it, or at least signed any businesses.
ReplyDeleteThere's a lot of competition in the area that likely made this (and the Holmdel A&P) unattractive to other grocers. There's a huge ShopRite further south on Route 35, not to mention a store called Best Market that's similar to Fairway. Don't forget a busy Whole Foods in Middletown, and now Wegmans is building a store in Middletown, across the highway from a Stop & Shop.
That Pathmark was a dump compared to the competition. I used to perform mystery shops for A&P and Pathmark right up to when they declared bankruptcy the final time. I never understood why they would spend all that money having us visit their stores when it was no secret the ship was sunk.
ReplyDeleteWhenever I drive down Route 36 I always see the old Bradlee's in Hazlet, brings back so many memories, but it also makes me sad to see it so dead after all these years.
ReplyDeleteThat is really strange how the fixtures are still inside...like you said usually an auction company will come in and sell them off.
ReplyDeleteThat did happen up here with at least a couple of the Grand Union stores when they went through bankruptcy or closed later on.
DeleteIn at least once case, the person who bought the store bought it that way (everything intact) to make it easier for someone else to reopen it (which did happen as an independent for a short time, but didn't last - it's now the site of the 1st of the ShopRite stores when they re-entered the Capital District of NY State).
The second was a later closing, and sat similarly equipped for a time. It is currently an Ocean State, and they still have some of the stuff (carts are obvious, but I can suspect that much of the shelving is part of the original as well). Of course that was a relatively new GU and with a chain like Ocean State it's not really surprising as they are more likely to use "old" stuff in the first place.
I'm guessing it was common in the 70s and 80s for Pathmark & Kmart to partner with eachother in a shopping center.
ReplyDeleteOff the top of my head, I can think of a dozen or more examples that look JUST like this one. They were especially common in Pennsylvania.
Seems that may have been common in general, just with different supermarkets in different areas.
DeleteUp here in NY we had several Price Chopper/Kmart combos and at least one or two that were Albany Public (Weis)/Kmart as well.
In just about all of those they were just that - the two stores with nothing else attached, unlike other stores where they often added a strip of smaller locations in between the two big ones.
I passed another Pathmark that seemed to be closed for the weekend. The shopping carts were chained up in front of the store.
ReplyDeleteWent through a browsing journey this afternoon, and found this was marked "Bomus Store" and not "Bonus Store". Simple error, but surprising no one else caught it!
ReplyDeleteFixed, thanks!
Delete