Before moving to its current location, the ShopRite of Rockaway was actually in Rockaway. Because, you know, that kinda makes sense. The current one is technically in Dover.
This is a pretty bad location for a supermarket, being located at a curve in the road and set way back. However, it's not hard to see how it would have originally been pretty great, assuming the supermarket predates the other surrounding buildings, which I would guess it does. Visibility is now seriously limited by the gas station and strip mall in front of the building west on 46, and the car dealer (visible here) just east. The property is located at 279 US-46.
Photographed November 2016
Does seem kind of bad, but ShopRite also seems to have enough interest to draw people in.
ReplyDeleteLike that store in western NJ that Weis built & closed after a couple years due to lack of business (and many thought the difficulty of access as well) that shortly after reopened as ShopRite and has done well since.
Same goes for the (old) store I referred to yesterday - that was built behind an older round roofed ShopRite (which faced the main highway in town) - the second one faced the side street and then they took out half the old store to provide a drive thru access to the new one, but it never kept them from being busy (and then now they moved to a store that another chain had closed for lack of business and do well there as well).
I'd be inclined to agree with you, especially if (and this is possible) the store moved from another location in town, so that the existing store is the third ShopRite of Rockaway. Looking at Historic Aerials, I was actually quite wrong -- all of the neighboring buildings predate the ShopRite building here. It's an interesting property for sure, but not unreasonable. The new location is definitely better though.
Delete