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Philadelphia area food. Yum.

May 21, 2006

Delco Grocery Store Update

The Acme in Lansdowne on Union Avenue, which closed a few months back, has been replaced by a Save-a-Lot. This brings Lansdowne full circle, since the chain used to be on Lansdowne Avenue back in 1992. That store later became a Dollarland and is now a Dollar Tree.

I'm glad Acme didn't screw Lansdowne the way it did Yeadon. When Acme closed its Chester Avenue store there about four years ago, it sold the space with a restrictive covenant that no other grocery store could move in for 10 years. Thanks, Acme!

At the time, Acme directed shoppers to its Penrose Plaza location near the Airport (for some reason, it didn't refer a lot of business to Lansdowne, which was closer). The irony is both those stores are gone now (the Penrose store is now a ShopRite).

The Yeadon store was famous for 2 things - it was a store where a woman walked around oblivious to a knife in her neck about 10 years ago, and it was also the former site of Hilldale Park, where Darby's Hilldale Giants played Negro League baseball.

Hopefully, Lansdowne's Save-a-Lot will stay open for a while. Competition from the relatively new Giant doomed Acme, but Save-a-Lot serves a different target audience. No plans yet for the old Super Fresh, which sits closed across from Giant on Baltimore Avenue.

-P