Look Inside: Former A&P - Chapel Hill, NC

We're really all over the place geographically lately. (By the way, insider intel...in about a week, we're starting a completely new geographic region I've never covered here before!) For this post, we're jumping back to North Carolina, just a few miles from Carrboro, to the small upscale city of Chapel Hill. This 22,000-square-foot building started life as a 1950s or 60s A&P and by 1997 had been subdivided, although that likely occurred before 1997.

Today, the former supermarket has been split into a bookstore and a small gourmet market/café. On the inside, there are a few A&P traits, but the exterior of the building still is largely original.

The facade has been altered slightly, but retains its original structure.

Closeup of The Root Cellar, the market.

And the bookstore in the left side of the building.

The Root Cellar has added a canopy for seating in front. Presumably, there would have been parking all along the front of the store when A&P was here.

And don't try to tell me that doesn't look like  a 1950s-era grocery store!

Today, these windows look straight into The Root Cellar. I'm not too familiar with the specifics of the Centennial model, whether or not these windows are original to A&P. The overhang in the front is very reminiscent of a grocery store...

You can also clearly see where A&P's front-end windows would have been, although the brick has been painted. And this was extremely similar to Glen Rock's former Centennial A&P that's now a SuperFresh (although here, the exposed wood is intentional)!

Heading inside the bookstore, we continue to see remnants of A&P where the front end would have been.

Once again, it's pretty obvious where A&P's windows would have been. On the other hand, The Root Cellar has gutted the entire space and really no substantial remnants of A&P remain.

The renovation here has a lot in common with the gorgeous A&P-turned-Whole Foods Market in Morristown, NJ.

Really nice touch on the monument sign. The Midtown Market is located at 752 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, Chapel Hill, NC.