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Then and Now: The famed Co-op and other grocery stores along West Street in Gardner
City has three supermarkets today, but 60 years ago there were four within a quarter of a mile of each other downtown
Mike Richard
Special for The Gardner News
At the present time there are three supermarkets in Gardner – Hannaford, Price Chopper and the Walmart Supercenter.
However, if you go back 60 years ago, there were four supermarkets within a quarter of a mile in the downtown Gardner area alone.
And that doesn’t even count the more than three dozen mom and pop corner stores that also inhabited that section of the city.
Venerable buildings still dominate Gardner s skyline today
Mike Richard
Special for The Gardner News
If there was ever a shot that perfectly depicted West Gardner Square on a lazy summer day in the 1960s, the accompanying photograph taken by Charles Clark could be it.
Shoppers are seen milling in and out of the many stores, while downtown regulars lean on a streetlamp or congregate in the doorway of a barber shop to share in the daily news.
A Gardner police officer, safely stowed in his traffic box, directs the cars motoring along through the square.
This was downtown Gardner in the mid-1960s when Edward’s Rexall Drugs, City Barber Shop, Gardner Office Supply, Priscilla Candy Shop, Sandrof’s Men’s Furnishings, Davis Hardware, First National Bank, J.C. Penney and Gardner Cooperative Bank filled the Pleasant Street store fronts.
BurgerFi/Facebook
Considered a rival to “upscale fast food” restaurants including Shake Shack and Bobby’s Burger Palace, Nevada’s first BurgerFi restaurant has started a countdown clock to reveal a January opening day in Henderson.
Headed to the Gardner Plaza retail center at the intersection of St. Rose and Coronado Center, BurgerFi’s corner space has installed a drive-thru, joining the already open breakfast specialists Scrambled and the under construction Padrino’s Latin Bar & Grill, also hoping for an early 2021 debut.
Launching on Friday, January 15, BurgerFi’s future serving hours have yet to be announced.
Promising the “BurgerFication of the Nation” is well underway, the chain has grown to 120 locations in nine years, serving Black Angus beef burgers prepared with no antibiotics, steroids, growth hormones, or additives.
First National Stores usher in age of the supermarket in Gardner
First store of its kind in city attracts 10,000 people to its grand opening
Mike Richard
Special for The Gardner News
The decade of the 1950s opened up a wide world of newness and novelty for society in America. World War II had ended and a new prosperity gave way to a baby boom explosion of automobiles, television and rock n roll music.
Another of these unique innovations – the supermarket – made its debut on the local scene 70 years ago last spring with the opening of Gardner’s first shopping headquarters, the First National Stores at 57 City Hall Ave., on April 27, 1950.