Bloomfield, New Jersey: A sporting goods store and a food market will open in Bloomfield. According to Welco Realty, Modell's Sporting Goods and Aldi will open locations at the Hartz site, located at 192 Bloomfield Avenue, near the corner of Watsessing Avenue. Hudson County-based MadRag is also proposing to open a location at the site, according to Bloomfield Pulse.
Modell's Sporting Goods, which is based in Manhattan, currently operates stores in 9 states and the District of Columbia. The only current Essex County location is within the Livingston Mall in Livingston. A location on Market Street in Downtown Newark closed recently. However, there are Modell's Sporting Goods locations in towns that border Essex County. Union and Elizabeth in Union County, Jersey City and Kearny in Hudson County, Clifton and Little Falls in Passaic County, and Parsippany in Morris County each have a Modell's Sporting Goods location.
Locations of Essen, Germany-based Aldi mostly sell private-label items at discounted prices. This will be the first Essex County location for the international chain, though there are Aldi locations in nearby Union, Union County and Passaic, Passaic County. Aldi competes with supermarket chains like Save A Lot, which operates a location in Newark's Central Ward.
According to the Township of Bloomfield, the site was once home to a Hartz pet food manufacturing facility. Hartz closed the plant in 2011, and moved operations to Shelby, Ohio. All of the employees were laid off. The area was declared to be an area in need of rehabilitation.
The site is located between the Watsessing Avenue Station on New Jersey Transit's Montclair-Boonton Line and the Grove Street Station on the Newark Light Rail. The area is also served by New Jersey Transit's Go Bus 28 and other local bus routes.
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