Stop & Shop
Open: ca. 2002 - 2024
Owner: Ahold Delhaize
Previous Tenants: unknown
Cooperative: none
Location: 545 Lincoln St, Lincoln Plaza, Worcester, MA
Photographed: February 17, 2019 and November 2, 2019
Closing Date: by October 31, 2024
Another Worcester Stop & Shop coming our way! This store was just under 60,000 square feet and was constructed around the early 00s on the site of an older strip of stores built in the 1960s or so. This is Lincoln Plaza, one of the large (if not the largest perhaps) strip malls in Worcester, with Stop & Shop, Target, Lowe's, and other big-box retailers. Originally, there were two strips in Lincoln Plaza, one roughly where the Stop & Shop is all the way through the Michaels or so on that same strip; the other was across the parking lot facing it in an L-shape. That side had two levels for at least part of its length, since the west side of Lincoln Plaza is at a lower elevation than the east side where the Stop & Shop is. What's interesting is that the east side was originally built with a Stop & Shop and a department store between 1960 and 1962 (roughly), but the Stop & Shop only appears in the city directories until 1969. Then it reappears at the address around the early 2000s, leading me to believe it probably wasn't in business for that whole time -- but it's possible. By 1969, there was a Finast across the mall in the western strip, and I believe (although I'm not sure) that it faced the lower level. Finast became a Big D sometime between 1979 and 1985. The mall emptied out gradually but significantly up through the 1990s, with Big D closing by 1995, and at some point between 1997 and 2001 was demolished completely -- almost. A 38,000 square foot building on the western strip was left -- that's where the Big D had been. For whatever reason, Price Chopper didn't seem to acquire this particular Big D location. That building, the sole remnant of the original two-strip Lincoln Plaza,
remains to this day. Announced during the summer of 2024, this store will be closing -- essentially any day now, I'm not sure of the exact date -- and so far it doesn't appear there's a new grocery tenant ready to move in.
It's possible this sign dates back to pre-reconstruction, too. The Stop & Shop was built in the 90s/early 00s style (note that it didn't get the
next/mid-00s store model) and it was one of the first tenants on the new eastern strip to open, by 2003.
Inside, though, the store had not aged well, which is why its recent closure didn't surprise me (and see my full coverage of the closing locations
here). It looks much older than its 19 years of age, and although (or possibly because) it seems to do a decent volume it's not in good shape. (Placer.ai estimated this store got 67,000 visits per month at the time of writing, several months before the closure was announced. The Price Rite discount supermarket to the west on Gold Star Boulevard is about 15,000 square feet smaller, but gets the same monthly visits; the Shaw's just south of it is about 10,000 square feet bigger, but gets more than double the monthly visits. Both of those are tours next week!)
It's a very standard early Super Stop & Shop layout, with the grand aisle on the left side. Floral, natural foods, prepared foods and deli line the left side wall, with cheese and seafood at the back. Meats and dairy line the rest of the back wall, with frozen and a ridiculous amount of general merchandise (but no pharmacy) on the right side. Bakery is in the front right corner.
This store has hardly been touched since opening day. I suppose it's not that old, but it seems to suffer from the usual Stop & Shop maintenance issues with lights burnt out (you'll see plenty in these pictures, although they're years old) and mismatched ceiling and floor tiles and all that. That said, this store has been kept up rather well -- I would say probably better than the
Grafton Street location, but not as good as Worcester's third Stop & Shop we'll see in about two weeks.
The Natural Foods department between floral and deli. Notice that this was before the days of Nature's Promise, as
later natural food departments were labeled with that brand. Even, as we see there, after they stopped selling natural foods.
Speaking of, the refrigerators in the natural foods department had no natural foods in sight for the years I was visiting this store. You can see below that they were just filled with other random merchandise.
Looking back up towards the front of the grand aisle...
My absolute favorite thing about these Stop & Shop stores was the cheese departments. Stop & Shop really did a great job with their cheese departments in the early 00s, then completely dropped the ball and stopped doing anything special around the time they switched to the fruit-slices logo.
No service seafood here; although I'm sure there's still seafood prep space sitting behind the cases, the service department closed years ago.
The grocery aisles, in my opinion, are really solid in this store. They're clean, generally well-stocked, and it seems a bit better maintained than the perimeter. Shelving also doesn't show its age as much as refrigeration.
But the floors are nice and clean, and mostly the shelves are always full, and mostly the lights work, so that's all really good to see.
Did this decor originally have some other form of lighting on the signage? It just seems strange to me that it's so dark above the cases.
Where the grocery aisles start to fall apart is here, where the massive general merchandise areas are. At one time, this was all fully stocked, but Stop & Shop during the 00s moved away from the giant general merchandise selections. The areas remain with not much else filling them, although this store's general merchandise was way better-stocked than I've seen in some others. Remember the aisle for VHS tapes filled with canned beans at the Grafton Street store?
This is quite an impressive selection, but I'm just not sure any of this is necessary with a massive Target right across the parking lot.
The freezer cases have been updated, it looks like...
Again, the floor is clean, the fixtures are generally in good shape, and the lights work. It's just some cosmetic work that would've needed to be done here.
Frozen foods and bread are in the last aisle...
...then bakery in the front right corner. I don't believe there ever was a pharmacy in this store.
And looking across the front-end...
That's all for the Lincoln Plaza Stop & Shop, a not particularly interesting store that's part of a very interesting mall! Tomorrow, we're going to backtrack a little and take a look at the independent grocers in the areas we've just covered.
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