The owner of five ShopRite supermarkets in southwest New Jersey has announced plans to open a 75,000-square-foot store in Camden, N.J., across the Delaware River from Philadelphia.
The store will be the first new full supermarket in 30 years to open in Camden, officially declared a “food desert” by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, defining low-income urban areas where at least a third of the residents live more than a mile from a large supermarket.
The store will be part of a planned 150,000-square-foot retail shopping center to be called Admiral Wilson Plaza. Camden mayor Dana Redd said the Plaza will serve as a much-needed tax-revenue generator and as an employer in a city of 77,000 people “that struggles with joblessness and a reputation for violent crime.”
About 400 construction jobs are expected to be created once the project breaks ground, officials said. The developer is the Goldenberg Group (Blue Bell, N.J.).
ShopRite is a chain of about 250 cooperative supermarkets individually owned and operated by 48 affiliates, all under the corporate and distribution arm of Wakefern Food Corp. (Keasbey, N.J.), which itself owns and operates 30 of the locations through the ShopRite Supermarkets subsidiary. The new Camden store will be owned by Supermarkets of Cherry Hill Inc., which owns five ShopRites in New Jersey’s Burlington and Camden counties.