Photo courtesy of Paul Drzal

It appears that the shiny new proposed grocery store adjacent to Bart Blatstein’s Piazza compound is going to require a few more months of waiting from the developer and the eager denizens of Northern Liberties. The unraveling and bankrupt parent company of Pathmark, A&P, is dawdling over their lease and creating havoc for the much-anticipated venue. According to Maria Panarits’ article in the Inquirer, A&P’s apparent torpor has prompted Schmidts Retail L.P. (the company behind the project at the corner of Girard and Germanton Avenues) to file a motion in the US Bankruptcy Court to force Pathmark to either move forward and open a grocery store or to abrogate their lease to allow for Blatstein and co. to find a suitable replacement.

So, as far as we can tell, until Pathmark figures out if they are coming or going, Northern Liberties is left without a much needed full scale grocery and Schmidts Retail L.P. is left to sell commercial space to prospective tenants without an anchor store. We guess everyone will still be buying their milk from Pink Dolphin for the unforeseeable future.