Retail Forever

A more detailed update is coming soon. In the meantime, there will not be any new posts.

ALDI #2676 Opened:  2018 Address:   223 Shoemaker Rd Photographed:  April 2022 For our first and only stop in Pottstown this time around (I think I covered almost everything last time), we have the Aldi located in the Pottstown Center Shopping Center. The space at 223 Shoemaker Rd Suite 123 started out in 1995 as a Weis Market, which replaced the store across the street which is now an Ollie's Bargain Outlet. The Weis closed on November 9, 2013. It sat vacant until 2017, when the building started preparations to become the second Aldi supermarket in Pottstown. It opened on July 12, 2018. The former Weis which Aldi replaced (Photo by joshaustin610 on Flickr)

GIANT #6563 Opened:  2019 Address:  100 Townsedge Dr Photographed:  April 2022 For our next stop, we make a quick return to Lancaster County for one of the final Giant stores in the county that I've not yet photographed, before moving on to Pottstown. For the complete history of what happened here, we must go back to 1916, when E. E. Ferguson and George W. Hassler opened a general store on State Street in downtown Quarryville. It was a while between the opening of that store and the opening of the store at TownsEdge Square, and since this post is only supposed to be about the TownsEdge store, I'll just include a quick timeline of the business's changes through the 1900s that eventually led to the opening of the aforementioned TownsEdge Square store.     1939: A second Ferguson & Hassler opened at the intersection of Routes 472 and 372. It was the first self-service store in Quarryville.     1944: The second store closed     1954: ...

REDNER'S #60 Opened:  2009 Address: 110 Northside Commons Photographed:  March 2022 Now that we've finished Woodbridge, let's head back to Pennsylvania to check out one of the three chain supermarkets in Palmyra.  Redner's opened its first Palmyra store in the mid-1980s, replacing a Giant Food Store at 220 Campbelltown Rd. It relocated to its current location at 110 Northside Commons in 2009.

For today's post, we have quite a few things to take a look at, including a unique former Tom's Convenience Store. To start, let's take a look at the history of Hess in Lancaster County, plus how CR's Friendly Markets fueled Hess' Central Pennsylvanian expansion. Part 1: Hess in Lancaster County Lancaster saw its first Hess service stations, at 5 Hartman Bridge Road and 1704 Columbia Avenue, in the 1960s. Grand Opening ad for the Columbia Ave location - Lancaster New Era - May 5, 1967 Just over two decades earlier, in 1942, Carlos R. Leffler, Inc was founded in Richland, PA as a fuel and propane distribution business. In 1981, the company opened its first convenience store, known as CR's Friendly Market, around Reading, PA. By the late 1990s, Hess operated three locations in Lancaster County, the aforementioned Hartman Bridge Road and Columbia Avenue locations as well as a station on Furnace Hills Road in Lititz (more on that later on).  By 1999, Leffler had gro...