Groceteria.com

Any guesses about the original disposition of this store? Scouring the web, I can find a few lingering references to a Foodland franchise at this address...but that doesn't mean it couldn't have been built as something else before that. I want to say Dominion, but that may just be wishful thinking on my part.

Dominion or A&P come to mind for me as well, but either would just be a guess. The black stone(?) below the windows looks very Loblaw-ish but nothing else does.

This store is for sale, and the online real estate listing contains a blueprint of the layout...which may or may not prove anything. 13,250 square feet! (Why are Canadians still measuring things in square feet?)

A more modern Miracle Food Mart/A&P/Metro stands a block from this location. I wonder if this could have been a predecessor store? (Probably not, unless it was in the Carroll's-Grand Union days.)

I'm inclined to file it under "probable independent/IGA" for now.

This was an IGA back around 1999-2000. It likely opened as an IGA originally. It was a Foodland most recently. Here is a Google Streetview image from 2009:

https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.9113803, ... 312!8i6656

J.R.G. wrote: ↑28 Apr 2020 00:32 This was an IGA back around 1999-2000. It likely opened as an IGA originally. It was a Foodland most recently. Here is a Google Streetview image from 2009:

https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.9113803, ... 312!8i6656

IGA it is, then.

This stretch of King Street seems to be quite the conduit of commercial development. In addition to the ex-IGA and the massive Metro at Bowmanville Mall, there also seems to be a former A&P three blocks west at 185. When Google drove by in 2007, that place still had a pill-shaped sign carcass out front. It has since been redeveloped as a Staples/Beer Store combination.

Of course, this brings up another mystery: If A&P operated at 185 King St E and also operated at the former Miracle Food Mart location at 243 King St E (verified in a 1978 newspaper ad) ...what was the timeline? Could both stores have been open as A&P simultaneously?
But I'll leave that for another day.

In 2000, both the Bowmanville Mall and King/Liberty locations operated as A&P simultaneously, with the IGA in-between. I would imagine Bowmanville Mall's (the former Miracle Food Mart) was converted in 1994. That was the hub of Bowmanville until the west end really took off.