Acme

After nearly a decade of anticipation, township residents who say they have had to travel outside Pemberton to find a decent grocery store will finally have a large, modern supermarket to call their own. The Township Council and Planning Board approved resolutions in a special meeting Wednesday night that will pave the way for a 45,000-square-foot Acme supermarket to be built at the corner of Broadway and Trenton Road. The owners of Acme - American Stores Properties of Salt Lake City, Utah - indicated they plan to break ground within the next two months, said Township Administrator Michael Spurgeon.

Business, they say, is healthy. It might even have picked up a little lately, according to one employee. The location at a busy intersection is "great," according to a company spokesman. Nonetheless, the Acme market that for more than a quarter of a century has been a fixture on the corner of Street and York Roads in Warminster will close Saturday. The inability to renegotiate a new lease has been cited as the official cause of death by both Acme spokesman Walter Rubel and Leonard Cutler, spokesman for Abraham Cutler, the property owner.

Two Northeast Acme Markets cited last month by the Department of Licenses and Inspections (L&I) for short-weighting food have received 22 such citations since 1987, an L&I spokeswoman said last week. The Acme at 8200 Roosevelt Blvd. has received 14 citations, said L&I spokeswoman Cynthia Bayete. "And it causes our inspectors the most concern of the two," she said. The Roosevelt Boulevard store was cited for one violation in 1987, six in 1988 and seven this year. The other store, at Rising Sun Plaza, 501 Adams Ave., was cited for three violations in 1987, two in 1989 and three this year.

Q. What's a boneless spare rib? A. Dunno, but they were on sale for $2.78 a pound at Acme last week. The Daily News called Acme headquarters after spotting Acme's ad for boneless ribs the other day. "Haven't we got a contradiction in terms?" we asked? The woman on the other end of the line chuckled. Said she didn't know. Suggested we call Walt Rubel, a fellow in the chain's legal department, who talks to the press. A lawyer. Hmmmm. What does he have to do with broken ribs?

Citing potential traffic problems, the Tredyffrin supervisors on Monday postponed a vote on a planned expansion of the Paoli Shopping Center. The supervisors gave Robert Lentz, an attorney for the Paoli Shopping Center Limited Partnership, until June 16 to fine-tune the preliminary plan for a 60,000-square-foot Acme supermarket in a vacant field behind the center. It would replace a 20,000-square-foot Acme on Route 30, which would be renovated to house retail stores. The supervisors declined to grant Lentz variances to allow smaller parking spaces and to build a structure of more than 12,000 square feet on the site.

Despite six months of protest ignited by a proposed Acme supermarket, only a handful of homeowners watched the Board of Supervisors unanimously approve plans for the store at a meeting last week. Residents of the County Line Park development and surrounding neighborhoods have complained that the 66,500-square-foot supermarket planned for Route 202 and Schoolhouse Road would increase traffic, replace a beautiful stretch of woods with an enormous parking lot, and - worst of all - add to flooding problems.

Labor union locals representing about 22,000 Acme employees voted overwhelmingly yesterday in support of a plan aimed at purchasing the city's dominant grocery chain from its parent company. The vote, 3,539 to 278, was taken at eight separate meetings held throughout the region and concluded with a massive gathering at the Civic Center last night. Members of the United Food and Commercial Workers union arrived by car and in busloads, and nearly filled the entire first floor of the Civic Center.

Thinking about running around the corner for tomato sauce? Think again if you live in Broomall. According to township officials and representatives of an employees' union, the Acme store at 2517 West Chester Pike will close Jan. 28. Wendell Young, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776, said the 80 to 100 union employees of the store received notices Monday that they would be transferred to other stores in...

Mitch Diodato left Philadelphia and moved to New Britain to get away from the city. He liked standing on his deck and watching an occasional deer leap across an adjacent field or a fox move stealthily through the tall grass behind his home. With a 66,500-square-foot supermarket scheduled to be built on eight acres behind his house, he thinks his glimpses of wildlife will become few and far between. "What they've done is effectively turn this place into Northeast Philadelphia," he lamented.

With some conditions, the township Planning Board last night unanimously approved the Acme supermarket's plan to open a larger store about a mile from its Route 130 location. The plan also calls for the present Acme store to close. The most controversial condition was that Acme change the store's planned access from Riverton Road to an entrance only. The Cinnaminson Township Committee must now make the final decision on the supermarket's application to open a 63,000-square-foot superstore that would include a pharmacy in the Clover Square strip mall on Route 130 near Riverton Road.

Acme Markets' corporate parent, Supervalu Inc., completed the sale Thursday of five grocery chains, including Malvern-based Acme, to a group of private-equity firms and real estate investors. The price was $100 million and the assumption of $3.2 billion in debt. Operations of Acme, Albertsons, Jewel-Osco, Shaw's, and Star Market stores and related in-store pharmacies were to transfer at 3:01 a.m. Friday to AB Acquisition L.L.C., an affiliate of an investor consortium, former Chrysler Corp.

"I hear they are going to try to operationally run the stores, rather than sell them to a competitor like Kroger or Safeway. That remains to be seen. " - Analyst Michael Keara, Morningstar Inc., on the future of Acme markets, sold by Supervalu Inc. to a group of private-equity firms. "Let's not sit around and wait to be told what to do. Let's build a business. " - Chet Kanojia, founder and CEO, Aereo Inc., a new Internet-based TV service that is moving in to major markets, including Philadelphia, despite uncertainty over accordance with broadcast copyright law. "The key is not to make it a different product, but how do you make it simpler?"

A vacant Acme Market that for six years has stood as a ghostly presence in downtown Moorestown has acquired a tenant and is getting a makeover. Moorestown Friends School, which acquired the site in 2006 with plans to convert it to classrooms, announced this week that a Mount Laurel architecture firm had leased the 15,000-square-foot space for its offices and is renovating its interior and brick exterior. "This is a concluding chapter to this period in school and town history," said the school's director of development, Mike Schlotterbeck.

Embattled Acme Markets' corporate parent, Supervalu Inc., announced Thursday the sale of five grocery chains, including Malvern-based Acme, to a group of private-equity firms and real estate investors. Supervalu announced a "definitive agreement" to sell its Acme, Albertsons, Jewel-Osco, Shaw's, and Star Market stores and related in-store pharmacies for $100 million and the assumption of $3.2 billion in debt. The buyer is AB Acquisition L.L.C., an affiliate of an investor consortium, former Chrysler owner Cerberus Capital Management L.P. Investors include Philadelphia based Lubert-Adler Partners, as well as Kimco Realty Corp., Klaff Realty L.P., and Schottenstein Real Estate Group.

NEW YORK - The Standard and Poor's 500 closed at another five-year high Thursday after the stock market got a boost from reports suggesting that the outlook for economic growth may be improving. The S&P 500 rose 11.10 points to 1,472.12, its highest close since December 2007, when the U.S. economy was entering the Great Recession. It also closed at a five-year high on Friday and is now 93 points off its record close of 1,565.15, logged in October 2007. The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 80.71 points at 13,471.22.

Like many others with property held hostage on New Jersey's storm-ravaged barrier islands, Acme Markets operations honcho Dan Croce had to wait until Friday before gaining access to stores that had been inaccessible on Long Beach Island and in Sea Isle City. When he finally made his way to the supermarkets - with an escort, in the case of badly destroyed LBI - what Croce saw could be described only with a single word: Humbling . Both 20,000-square-foot Acmes had been sacked by floodwaters.

Acme Markets owner Supervalu Inc. on Friday said it would lay off 700 people at its Shaw's and Star Market supermarkets across New England by Nov. 3 in a cost-cutting move coinciding with ongoing efforts to find a buyer for the debt-addled corporation. Hundreds of store-level workers have been laid off over the past two years at the Acme division as well. In recent months, Supervalu has been pursuing buyers interested in pieces or all of the Minnesota-based corporation, which owns grocery chains across the country as well as a wholesale food distribution business.

Acme Markets worked Wednesday to reopen and restore power to 13 stores that had remained shut down at the start of the day, owing to effects of Hurricane Sandy. By evening, only six remained closed, most of them in Shore towns, a spokesman said. Twenty-three other supermarkets were operating on generator power, said Steve Sylven, a spokesman for Acme's corporate parent, Supervalu Inc. The closed stores were in New Britain, Morrisville, Willingboro, Beach Haven, Sea Isle, and Brigantine.