ACME Markets
Opened: 2015
Moving on from Mount Airy, we are starting with our first store in Chestnut Hill! This extremely green and suburban neighborhood is centered around Germantown Avenue in far northwestern Philadelphia. It's bounded to the southwest by the Wissahickon Valley Park, which stretches nearly five miles end to end. This ACME is located in a rather generic strip mall in the northeastern part of the neighborhood, so unfortunately we don't really get any of the small town-feeling charm in this particular store, but we'll get there with our next stop.
A Food Fair had existed on this property until around the late 1970s, when it became an A&P. A&P then converted to SuperFresh in 1983, and was demolished in 1998 to be rebuilt and reopened as a SuperFresh the following year. The existing 47,000 square foot building was converted to Pathmark in 2008 before closing in 2015. ACME opened after the usual three days and since has done a light renovation.
What hasn't been changed is the exterior, which still has the recognizable late-90s A&P/SuperFresh design, updated in 2008 with Pathmark colors. ACME has not painted the exterior, and until fairly recently the interior still featured Pathmark Sav-A-Center decor. I was disappointed to find that it no longer did...
This store has gotten an attractive if extremely simple version of Quality Built, with new flooring and fixtures in the grand aisle and new (but very sparse) decor around the store.
Only the produce department flooring was updated, and here we can see the transition to the older flooring in the back. Notice that the corner deli sign is only slightly illuminated by the uplighting, with a portion missing where I assume the A&P department sign was. I could be wrong, but I assume one of these arches was originally located there (though, of course, that one doesn't interrupt the lighting). We'll see the same thing in other departments.
It looks like this was a pretty lazy renovation from SuperFresh decor to Pathmark decor, and an equally lazy one from Pathmark decor to ACME decor. The best part of the store is the high ceilings with which it was built, but they make the walls look even more bare since the decor is so sparse here.
Newly added beer and wine department in the first aisle. Pharmacy is in front of that...
As we can see, lighting in the grocery aisles was not updated. Neither was the flooring, although I'm not sure whether it was changed at all when the store was converted to Pathmark.
A look across the back wall with, again, too much space on the walls.
And again, lighting problems on the meat and seafood sign -- not to mention that it's poorly centered over the department. The store wasn't crowded when I visited, and I wonder about its volume. I imagine it at least breaks even for it to have stayed open this long -- but I also assume that, if it were a high volume and successful store, more money would've been put into it by A&P and ACME.
Not much to see in the grocery aisles. They're plenty clean and everything but so boring.
The bakery department is in the back right corner, with frozen in the second-to-last aisle and one side of the last aisle. The other side is dairy.
It does look like ACME updated the freezer cases here. These look newer than Pathmark's opening.
It doesn't look like the dairy cases were updated, though. Dairy continues into a little alcove in the back corner next to bakery.
This is a slightly strange corner and I wonder if it was originally something else, when SuperFresh was here. Especially since, if we look carefully, there's no upward lighting on the bakery department sign -- so maybe that area was rearranged at some point, such as when Pathmark came in.
Ah yes, the famous A&P slatted refrigerator case toppers...
Dairy continues into the front alcove, with offices behind it. The front end continues from there...
Opened: 2015
Previous Tenants: SuperFresh (1999-2008) > Pathmark (2008-2015)
Location: 7700 Crittenden St, Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, PA
Photographed: July 30, 2021
This store isn't unpleasant but it's certainly not exciting in any way. I think it's a very good example of the type of "good enough" remodels ACME has been doing recently, which I am not too thrilled with. But it isn't in bad shape, and it seems to do alright (again, otherwise it wouldn't still be in business). Up next, we're moving about half a mile west to Germantown Avenue for a relatively new supermarket in Chestnut Hill here on The Market Report!
Comments
Post a Comment