Guns and Butter

Acme Markets Inc. (Malvern, Pa.) has purchased 3.5 acres of the former Defense Supply Center Philadelphia to build a new South Philadelphia supermarket.

The purchase is yet another step in the conversion of the former military facility to commercial use.

The site at 20th Street and Oregon Avenue sits astride an 86-acre tract formerly occupied by the DSCP, also known as the “Quartermaster's Depot,” that includes 1.7 million square feet of buildings and 45 acres of readily developable cleared land.

Acme says it intends to build a state-of-the-art, 50,000-square-foot combination food and drug store on the site. Groundbreaking is scheduled for November 2002, with opening planned for late summer of 2003.

Acme, a subsidiary of Albertson's Inc. (Boise, Idaho), began in Philadelphia in 1891 as the Acme Tea Co. At its peak, in 1932, it operated some 2977 corner grocery stores. Its first two supermarkets were built in 1937 in Paterson, N.J. Today, says president Carl Jablonski, the retailer is expanding throughout Philadelphia, converting older stores to newer, larger formats and planning to build additional stores.