Bonus Store:
Location: 1506 State Route 23, Butler, NJ
The Butler Stop & Shop has sat abandoned since the store relocated to the former Kinnelon Pathmark in October 2015. The replacement store is just across Route 23. I hoped to visit this place when it was still open but never made it. Wound up passing it on my way to the Jefferson Acme and had to stop for a closer look. I do love an abandoned supermarket!
Grand Union opened here back in 1971 with Stop & Shop taking over the space in 2001 when GU went out of business. I'll never forget the day I watched the GU employees walking out of the corporate offices for the last time. It was all over the news. One of the saddest days in the history of supermarkets. I actually thought Stop & Shop would keep some of Grand Union's products and services but no, they got rid of absolutely everything that made Grand Union great.
Stop & Shop dressed up the facade with some dormers and a gate along the top after Grand Union shut down. A similar treatment was done to the the Stop & Shop in Sayville, You can have a look by clicking here.
As small as this store was, it apparently drew some big crowds. We'll see some evidence of that in the satellite views.
LOOK INSIDE >>>
The place is cleared out with not much of anything left on the walls. The only design element left behind is the floor which I believe is from Grand Union's early 90's remodels. Back then, they kept a very similar look to their 80's remodeled stores but swapped out the red and white color scheme for green and yellow.
Stop & Shop added these offices along with their clock.
The Stop & Shop logo can still be seen but it did not show up in this photo with the sun glare. I resorted to doing some tricks in Photoshop to get make it visible...
Still a great looking store!
Stop & Shop road kill at the entrance.
AERIAL VIEWS
Birds eye views on Bing maps are apparently being done away with. They rarely exist these days for any store I research. This is a 3D view from Google Earth. Kinda lame.
HISTORIC IMAGES
2012
Notice the packed parking lot at the Stop & Shop!
2006
2002
1995
1987
1979
1971
Grand Union under construction in 1971.
1970
You can view some photos of the new Stop & Shop at the Kinnelon Mall by clicking here.
What occupies the former A&P across from the former GU?
ReplyDeletePetco and Dollar Deal share the space.
DeleteThe A&P also had the slanted Futurestore facade. I've got no idea when the store closed.
DeleteSpeaking of, I don't know if the facade exists anymore in New Jersey. The last two stores I knew that had it were Wayne and Ortley Beach, and the owners of the shopping center in Wayne redid the outside recently. (How nobody snapped this store up I'll never understand)
DeleteSomeone did, they just never opened for some reason. It was supposed to be the 'Wayne Natural Foods Market'owned by the same people as the Ramsey Farm. They just never did anything after the facade, but the same people own it and the 'MRKT Square' is supposed to be "coming soon"
DeleteThis was one of my "home" stores when I lived in the area. While it was nice living so close to a (mostly) untouched Grand Union store, it was outdated and neglected as a Stop & Shop, as if the company was waiting for A&P to go bankrupt so they could take the Pathmark across the highway. With that and Stop & Shop's acquisition of the (frequently) flooded A&P of Pompton Plains, the company pretty much owns this section of Route 23.
ReplyDeleteI remember the store doing well, but don't let those aerial photos fool you into thinking it was always mobbed- the small strip mall immediately to the north is home to a busy pizzeria and many of those customers parked in the Stop & Shop lot. At the time, a lot of people shopped at Pathmark, which was a larger, nicer store, and usually had better prices. I imagine the new Stop & Shop does really well without any immediate competition. Bloomingdale has an old IGA-type store in Food World (which was once an early ShopRite, I believe) but the closest modern grocery stores are the aforementioned Stop & Shop in Pompton Lakes, another in Wanaque (one of my favorite grocery stores) and the Acme and Kings in Boonton.
I actually pass this store all the frickin' time now! Me and my dad are working on a house our boss is trying to flip over on Fayson Lakes Road, so we pass it pretty much every time we go there. I was wondering if the "house" facade things were something GU was trying in the 90s, or if S&S had added them, good to know it was the latter.
ReplyDeleteIt was definitely added by Stop & Shop.
DeleteAnd it was added later. The store didn't get this treatment until after the logo change. All they did was a basic sign replacement.
DeleteThe floor is definitely GU issue - our local store (now Ocean State) still has exactly the same in the front (around checkouts, as seen here) and in the rear (what would have been in front of the service departments like meat and seafood, since those are apparently still existing behind the new wall OSJL put up to create more storage space).
ReplyDelete