The Market Report

Vicente's Supermarket Opened: 2014 Owner:  Manuel Vicente Barbosa Previous Tenants:  A&P > Star Market > Shaw's Cooperative:  none Location:  160 Pleasant St, Brockton, MA Photographed:  July 6, 2019 Vicente's Supermarket started as a small international grocer here in downtown Brockton, later acquiring a supermarket on the south side of town . Then in 2014, Vicente's opened their second location -- at over 35,000 square feet, it was almost double the size of the Main Street store. Vicente's pulled out all the stops for this store, using various loans and incentive programs designed to bring supermarkets into lower-income areas that needed them. The 2014 opening was high-profile and hailed as a fundamental change to this neighborhood. This is the only supermarket in downtown Brockton. There are others just outside downtown, but as is the case with many cities, a lot of the population doesn't drive. The new Vicente's and neighboring health cente...

Original Grocery Tenant: Brockton Public Market Address: 597 Centre St, Brockton, MA Opened:  1950s Closed:  ca. late 1980s Later Tenants:  assorted non-grocery tenants Photographed:  July 6, 2019 In the late 1980s, a new Super Shaw's opened at the Crescent Plaza in eastern Brockton. The chain moved from their 1950s-era location on Centre Street about half a mile north. The original location, here in a strip mall that's now very quiet, opened as a Brockton Public Market, later branded as BPM Grocers and then eventually Shaw's. Part (or maybe all?) of the roughly 20,000 square foot former supermarket later appears to have become a movie theater, which closed by the time I visited the property in 2019. Interesting that the pitched roof is also visible inside, even though there's a drop ceiling. I don't know what this store's layout would've been, but perhaps the produce department was here on the left side. The storefront is clearly an old supermarket. A Do...

Original Grocery Tenant:  Price Chopper Address:  50 Cambridge St, Worcester, MA Opened:  2003 Closed:  January 2025 Later Tenants:  vacant Photographed:  March 26, 2025 It's time to return to the Main & Cambridge Price Chopper, which closed at the end of January . The massive, 70,000 square foot store was built from the ground up in 2003, replacing an older store just north. The space remains vacant with several Price Chopper remnants around the property, although the signage has all been removed from the building itself. But Price Chopper banners remain in the parking lot, as do the cart corrals. Price Chopper said at the time of closure that they were looking for someone to sublet from them for the last several years on their lease -- nobody seems interested yet, although as I no longer live in Worcester I don't have my ear to the ground the way I used to -- and, as a result, it seems like everything has been left completely as-is. The Price Chopper...

Market 22 Opening: TBA Owner:  unknown Previous Tenants:  assorted non-grocery tenants Cooperative:  none Location:  17 Mechanic St, Worcester, MA Photographed:  March 28, 2025 Downtown Worcester will soon be getting its first new grocery store in years. That'll happen when Market 22 opens in @ The Common -- formerly the Midtown Mall -- between Front and Mechanic Streets in Worcester. The store was first announced earlier this spring, and is expected to open in the coming weeks but hasn't announced a formal opening date yet. I visited in late March to check on the progress. Read more about the background here . The store is set up to open into an indoor mall, which has several other storefronts inside also. It faces Front Street with lots of big windows, meaning it'll be very visible from the common. It's very small -- my best estimate is just a couple thousand square feet at most -- and looks like it'll be closer to a bodega or large corner grocer than a full ...