Albany Public Markets

[amesman]

A chain of supermarkets around Albany, New York, owned at one time by Weis Markets, and later sold to Grand Union. Discuss them here.

Locations were as follows:

Albany - Westgate Plaza - now demolished(located in the area to the right of Price Chopper)

Menands - Became Grand Union. Now closed. Located next to the also vacant Two Guys Department Store building.

East Greenbush #1 - Not sure of location. Now demolished.

East Greenbush #2 - On U.S. 9 and U.S. 20. Became Grand Union. Now an Eckerd.

Delmar - Now offices

Glenville(?) - Became Grand Union. Now vacant. Located next to Kmart.

Latham - Now Office Max.

Latham #2 - Next to Kmart. Changed to Grand Union. Now Golds Gym.

[BillyGr]

East Greenbush #1 (Actually Rensselaer) was located on Route 9 & 20 within the city of Rensselaer - at the 3rd light after coming off the Dunn Memorial, turn left, go past the Newer Built Eckerd and Aldi on your right and the Grossman's Bargain Outlet on the left and the site is to your left as you approach the rail tracks.

To your right, where the Aldi stands and straight back to the tracks was the Joy Store.  Since that started in the late 50's/very early 60's and the AP was already there by the 1967 report when Weis bought them - this is probably the first "shopping area (loosely)" on the Rensselaer side of the area.

Here's a shot of the East Greenbush #2 (now Eckerd)

[amesman]

Here's the Menands store. Later became Grand Union. Located next to the old Two Guys Dpeartment Store.

[BillyGr]

This building was formerly the Albany Public Market store in Delmar - it sits on Delaware avenue just down (and across)the street from the Delaware Plaza.  It is now a medical building.  As you can see, the parking area in front is small, so I took this photo from across the street and had to put it together - the store is very long, but not terribly deep due to the land it sits on.

I added the bottom photo for interest - if you look at the APM shot, you can see that to the right end of the building it looks quite open.  That's where this shot comes from.  This area had quite a large landslide a few years back - the fence you see defines the (current) edge of the land, it then drops down to the Normanskill Creek.  Prior to the landslide, there was probably 25-30 feet of land between the road and the drop-off point, along with a small produce stand which also collapsed.  The road was closed for several months - luckily the slide didn't spread to the old APM or the Jiffy Lube/Car Wash on the opposite side!

[BillyGr]

To give you a better idea, the Albany Public (Later Scot's Lo Cost - name borrowed from Weis, then Grand Union) store in Westgate Plaza in Albany sat about as the lines indicate.  The left corner of the store was where you see the arrow, then it went to the right, about as far out as the corner of the Fashion Bug and kept going off to the right, behind the plaza - so you only saw a small corner of the store.  They had a back entrance that created a "hall" on the left side from the front door to the back, then you made a 90 degree turn to enter the store proper.  Off to the left of that were several smaller stores, the Barbizon (Women's wear), Woolworth and then at the end the Paper Cutter/Wheels combo (which was, we believe a JCPennys at one point).

[Scrabbleship]

Originally posted by amesman
Here's the Menands store. Later became Grand Union. Located next to the old Two Guys Dpeartment Store.

That location could see some non-traditional use in the somewhat near future. The Bank of America tax processing offices which occupy the former Two Guys location has grown to the point that they're considering leasing the ex-Grand Union from Vornado for additional space.

[BillyGr]

This one needs to have the title changed to Albany Public Markets (division of Weis)