They played by the old A&P model, and on Friday, January 11, they will go out with it. Plainsboro’s SuperFresh supermarket at 10 Schalks Crossing Road in the Plainsboro Plaza will close its doors, along with two other “underperformers” in Westwood and Marlton. Yet by any performance yardstick, the Plainsboro store has held up well, compared with the surrounding Yardley, Pennsylvania, Hamilton, and East Windsor stores that have fallen like dominoes over the last 18 months. Today the 10 Schalks Crossing supermarket stands as one of only 22 still-standing SuperFresh stores.
It is not only the last remaining full service supermarket in Plainsboro but also an important retail component of the Village Center area that is steadily growing in downtown Plainsboro, with residential and office space now occupied within walking distance of the store.
The question now is whether some other supermarket will fill the void that otherwise faces the Plainsboro community. ShopRite has been mentioned as a possibility by some current — and very hopeful — employees of the SuperFresh. But nothing is guaranteed for Plainsboro shoppers. As Township Administrator Bob Sheehan says, “we are tuned in to the concerns of the community and have expressed our concern to the current owners.”
But the SuperFresh is part of a complicated corporate landscape and a fast-changing retail environment. The store leases its space from the plaza, which is owned by the institutional pension fund TIAA-CREF and managed by Kraftco. According to Sheehan TIAA-CREF is now trying to sell the Plainsboro Plaza, and had listed the property with Cushman & Wakefield. But Cushman & Wakefield has recently turned over the listing to Jones Lang LaSalle. As Sheehan says, “the owners don’t seem to be too well informed.”
Additionally the SuperFresh space, at 60,000 square feet, is becoming a “neither here nor there” size in the supermarket industry. The big box stores in the major malls served by four-lane highways are approaching 100,000 feet in size. In village type settings such as the Plainsboro location smaller stores are now in vogue. A Trader Joe’s such as the one in the Lowe’s Center on Route 1 in West Windsor runs about 25,000 to 30,000 square feet.
One person very familiar with the Plainsboro commercial real estate scene is Thomas Troy, senior vice president of Sharbell Development Corp, which has developed the housing units on the north side of Plainsboro Plaza, off Plainsboro Road, and also the mixed-use office and retail in the Plainsboro Village Center across the street on Schalks Crossing Road. In addition he lived in Plainsboro until four years ago. “As a former resident, I know that losing that supermarket will be a big loss to the community,” Troy says.
With the departure of SuperFresh the Plainsboro Plaza will have vacancies at its major anchor spaces on either end. But Troy believes that the center still has potential, especially if it is redeveloped as a mixed use property, with residential being one of the components. Troy’s company, Sharbell, has actively — but so far unsuccessfully — pursued the purchase of Plainsboro Plaza.
“There’s still a lot of water between us and the seller right now,” says Troy. But if Sharbell were to buy it, Troy believes that the company would bring something currently missing to the equation.
The current owners, Troy explains, are typical of large institutional owners of commercial property. “They’re not on the ground, they don’t have the same level of involvement” as an owner-operator would have. The Plainsboro Plaza “might benefit from an owner who has the ability to create more of an urban fabric at the location” — someone who could see the potential of the newly relocated medical center, the expanded Novo Nordisk, and the Village Center across the street and then be able “knit things together,” in Troy’s words.
“If we were successful in acquiring it,” Troy says, “I would make every effort to get some sort of food store back in there.”
What happens in the meantime is another matter, and whether the current owner would make an extra effort to fill the supermarket vacancy to enhance the property’s sale price is also unknown. In the worst case it is an inconvenience for many Plainsboro residents and a financial nightmare for many of the current SuperFresh employees, many of them longtime employees who helped make the store a neighborhood institution.
“I’ve worked here, at SuperFresh for over two decades, and what’s really been the best is the benefits — even for part time. You can’t beat them,” says Wendy Bruce. “For most of my time here, you could go to any doctor, all paid for by the company, except for a minimal co-pay.”
Within the past two years, the cutbacks have begun nibbling at this prized policy. Dental treatments, shots, and X-rays, began to cost employees. Then the free week’s paid vacation and personal days were withdrawn and time-and-a-half for working Sundays, and finally the pay cuts began. The employees’ union made these incremental sacrifices in hopes of keeping the doors and jobs open.
The bottom-line viewers indeed can point to the large number of Plainsboro workers with long seniority. June O’Tavey has worked for SuperFresh for 27 years — one year less than one of her friends and co-workers. Even Joe Williams, who has spent the last 15 years hauling the shopping carts back into the store, claims a personal dedication to his job. And this is where the intangible benefits of seniority come in.
Shoppers go to the fish counter not only because they like the fish, but they like the service and product Mike gives them. Each of these employees provides a sense of permanence in a town that is in sore need of it. This was A&P’s reason half a century ago for resisting the lure to the larger impersonal stores. Whether they can resist it this time will be another matter.
Though General Manager Dennis Gibson is remaining mute, virtually everyone else employed by the Plainsboro SuperFresh seems sure that Shoprite is waiting in the wings to pick up this location.
And that’s the problem. “I just don’t know what I am going to do, says O’Tavey. “After 27 years, I just can’t go to Shoprite and start at the bottom — with no benefits.”
“No way, I’m going to Shoprite for $7 an hour.” says Williams. “I’m looking over the Cafe Galore in South Brunswick, or maybe it’s time to try and make some money with my Tai Kwan Do blackbelt.”
Interestingly, the food marketing analysts do not seem to be lining up with A&P’s plan. Many are calling for keeping the stores small and making them modern. The aging babyboomer population, market surveys show, all seek smaller stores. But whatever corporate entity purchases the old Plainsboro Plaza space, the town will be losing a good neighbor.
