TOUR: Portland Market - Portland, PA

Portland Market

Owner: unknown

Opened: unknown, closed by 2022

Cooperative: none
Location: 409 N Delaware Dr, Portland, PA

Photographed: December 22, 2018 and May 29, 2022

Portland, PA is a tiny town of under 500 people directly across the Delaware River from the even tinier Columbia, NJ, with a population of just over 200. Portland might not be large enough to support a full supermarket, but they did have this small grocery store at around 6000 square feet until its closure in around 2022 or possibly earlier.

This building has certainly been a grocery store for quite some time, probably nearly a century. Notice the bricked-over windows on the side here, and this wonderful cart corral on the side of the building...

So let's head in and see what the Portland Market was all about. When it was in business, the store was nearly a full supermarket, even if drastically reduced in amenities. Produce was in the front right corner as seen here, with dairy and frozen taking up the rest of the first aisle. Meat and deli were on the back wall, with about three or four aisles in total. There was one or two convenience store-style registers in the front of the store.

As we can see, the shelves were sparsely stocked but there's definitely a little bit of many things. The store was supplied by C&S and used the Best Yet storebrand.

Oddly, although there's clearly not much merchandise for sale here, the maintenance at this store was surprisingly good. As we can see, it was quite clean and the fixtures were mostly in good shape, it's just that there was nothing to sell.

This decor is fascinating to me, as it definitely was not designed for this store given its poor fit with the space and the fixtures present. But then, I don't recognize it as the decor of any chain that was in this area. Can anyone place it? Or perhaps it was taken from an independent, maybe even another C&S-supplied store?

As we see, the store didn't look bad at all in these 2018 pictures, just empty.

And I don't believe there were any more store-cut meats, only packaged items. There may have been a few packages of beef and chicken packaged in store, but the rest was prepared items like ham, sausage, and cold cuts.

And at the other side of the back wall is the deli.

Opposite the deli is a case that looks quite new that may have been intended for baked goods or prepared foods, but was just sad and filled with some party supplies and random items.

But as we can see, there was a fairly substantial grocery selection here too.

One more look at the meat department before moving along. I love the signage, and I wish I knew where it was from!

I don't know for how long this store has been an independent, and I don't know if it ever was anything else before Portland Market.

I returned in the summer of 2022 to find the store closed with this note on the door. It seemed as though the store had been "closed today" for quite some time.

We can take a little look inside and see that the shelves apparently were starting to thin out before the store closed, so I doubt it will be reopened anytime soon.

That wraps up our look at the areas south of Stroudsburg, and up next we're headed about seven miles north as the crow flies for another small store right on the border of New Jersey!