In Edgewater on Friday, a former Pathmark was reborn as an Acme — the first of 11 North Jersey A&Ps and Pathmarks to be converted to Acmes and Stop & Shops as the bankrupt, 156-year-old A&P chain sells off stores.
But the picture is grimmer in six North Jersey shopping centers, where no bidders have stepped forward to buy stores from Montvale-based Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. Inc., which operates under the A&P, Pathmark and Food Basics brands in New Jersey.
Seven stores in Bergen and Passaic counties, and about 65 elsewhere, have failed to attract bidders. Sources say one of those — an A&P in Washington Township — is expected to be purchased. But without bidders, the A&Ps in Pompton Lakes, Wayne, West Milford and Woodland Park, as well as the Pathmarks in Ramsey and Hackensack, are likely to close, leading to the loss of more than 500 jobs.
The company hasn’t given up on selling these stores, planning to seek bids again. In court documents filed Friday night, A&P said that a Pathmark store in Fair Lawn had been sold to its landlord, but there is no guarantee that it will remain open or continue to operate as a supermarket. Union officials and commercial real estate experts say A&P is unlikely to find buyers for the remaining stores — though the spaces are likely to be rented out at some point.
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Visits to several of these stores on Friday showed some of the challenges they have faced, including strong competitors nearby. The Pathmark on Route 17 in Hackensack, for example, is back-to-back with a newer Stop & Shop, and the A&P in Wayne vies for customers with both a ShopRite and a Stop & Shop in town. Companies that have considered bids on the A&P properties “look at how strong is the competition, and [ask] can they compete?” said Chuck Lanyard, president of the Goldstein Group, a commercial real estate company in Paramus.
The lack of bids has only heightened the anxiety of workers and nearby store owners who have been sweating it out since A&P filed for bankruptcy protection in July. With the end apparently in sight, employees told of job hunts, shoppers reminisced about their experiences at the stores, and nearby merchants worried about how they would fare without a strong anchor store to draw foot traffic.
Yefim Kesselman, owner of the Wine King liquor store at the Pathmark shopping center on Route 17 in Hackensack, dreads the shutdown of the supermarket. Kesselman has been through this before: He owns another store in Randolph that was in a Pathmark shopping center. When the Pathmark there closed about seven years ago, he said, his Randolph store’s business fell off by about 20 percent.
“It’s killing me,” said Kesselman, who employs seven people in his store.
Kesselman’s experience illustrates the importance of supermarkets as anchors in shopping centers. According to Lanyard, big supermarkets typically draw 20,000 to 30,000 customers a week — the foot traffic that smaller stores nearby depend on.
Losing the A&P Fresh at the Pompton Lakes Town Square on Wanaque Avenue would hurt, said Shauna McCormick, 21, a hairdresser at Supercuts in the same shopping center, which also includes a pizzeria, a dollar store and a liquor store.
“The parking lot right now is filled because of it,” McCormick said.
Anne Marie Carrubba, a clerk at Plains Pharmacy in Wayne, estimated that 80 percent of her customers combine their trip with a visit to the A&P in the same shopping center.
“They drop off their prescription, and then go to the A&P,” she said. “I think a lot of people who work in the area stop off there on the way home. We need a food store.”
Workers in several of the stores said a number of their co-workers already have left for other supermarket jobs. Acme notified the United Food and Commercial Workers union last week that it is looking to hire a “significant” number of employees at its new stores, and the union sent about 200 résumés to Acme.
At the Pompton Lakes A&P Fresh, Bart Bayes, 53, who has worked at A&P for 14 years, said he would most likely look for a job at another supermarket, since that’s what a lot of his former managers have done.
At the A&P on Valley Road in Wayne, bakery manager Delmy Hernandez, an immigrant from El Salvador who has worked at the store for 17 years, said she submitted her résumé to a union representative in an effort to find work at another store.
“We have a little hope,” said Hernandez, a West Milford resident who is married with three children. But even if she moves to another store, she’s not looking forward to leaving her longtime colleagues.
“We are like family here, so that’s why it hurts,” she said.
Several A&P workers said the company has not kept them informed through the bankruptcy process.
“You hear all these rumors,” said Patricia Brovich, 52, a cashier at the A&P in Wayne. “But nobody tells us anything.”
Several shoppers expressed sadness at the likely closing of the stores and the loss of jobs among workers they have come to know over the years. Salimah Ali of Hackensack, a 43-year-old administrative assistant, said she has been shopping at the Hackensack Pathmark since she was a girl.
“It’s always a friendly environment,” she said. “Things are easy to find and if you don’t [find the products], they’re willing to help you.”
“I feel bad about the workers who are going to be out of jobs,” said her 23-year-old daughter, Akilah, a digital analyst.
Other shoppers, however, echoed some of the same reasons analysts have offered on why the company that helped create the modern supermarket was dying: Its stores didn’t change with the times, as management failed to carve out an appealing identity among fast-growing, more nimble competition ranging from big-box discounters like Walmart to niche retailers like Whole Foods Market and Trader Joe’s.
Several of those interviewed in Pompton Lakes, for example, said they weren’t regular A&P customers, preferring instead to shop at ShopRite or Stop & Shop.
“I usually go to Stop & Shop,” said Andrew Owimrin, 26, of Hackensack, who stopped at Pathmark on Friday for a few items. “A lot of Pathmark’s prices are a little bit higher than you’d expect. The quality of their deli meats is not as good, and the meats don’t look as appealing as at Stop & Shop.” He has an idea for which chain should replace the Pathmark: “What I would like is a Trader Joe’s. I’d be there every day.”
Date; October 11, 2015