Filling In: Wegmans Plaza

This article was scraped from Rochester Subway. This is a blog about Rochester history and urbanism has not been published since 2017. The current owners are now publishing link spam which made me want to preserve this history.. The original article was published March 22, 2015 and can be found here.

     By       Matthew Denker

It has come to my attention that there are some     pretty stalwart fans

of Tops Friendly Markets out there! That means this is the Filling In for you (as opposed to     this one    ).

OK, so as some of you may or may not know, there's a Wegmans on East Avenue. Shocker. Not only that, but Wegmans built themselves a mammoth new store on the rubble of a row of commercial buildings behind their old store, and then tore the old store down for parking. If     that's    not filling in, I don't know what is.

But the new Wegmans store has is nearly two years old now. That's a good enough run. And besides, that 349-space surface lot is begging for something new.

The block Wegmans currently occupies is over 7 acres. That is about 1/2 of the World Trade Center site in New York City. I bet you can see where this is going...

BAM! ...Half the World Trade Center!

So I know what you're thinking (I don't know what you're thinking, but I'm about to make a list of what I think you are thinking).

1. Hey man, I like Wegmans     - No problem, these two buildings alone have six million square feet of space. We'll put a new Wegmans in one of the towers.
2. Aren't these a little tall for Rochester?     - They're not any taller for Rochester than they are for other cities not named New York City or Dubai, so I say it's time.
3. Won't this kind of flood the market for space (of any kind) in Rochester?     - Don't think of these as flooding the market so much as creating a whole new market. Besides, all of downtown Rochester only has about twice as much space as this as it is.
4. Ugh, where will all these people park?     - If it was up to me, there would be enough people living and working in these towers that the typical commute would be on an elevator. Unfortunately, they'll probably park in front of your house and partially block your driveway.
5. Hey man, what about all those hard working Wegmans employees?     - See 1 above. They will all get jobs in the even newer even better Wegmans.

Ok, but in all seriousness, let's take a look at the evolution of the block with Wegmans, because it's instructive of just how this filling in stuff works.

Here's a map of the block from 1902 the year before this area was annexed from Brighton by the City of Rochester...

And here's another map from 1926...

And here's a photo of the library in that map (it's labeled school in 1902). It was demolished in 1967 after the land was auctioned with the stipulation that the buyer demolish or move the building...

Progress!

Here are some other buildings that were there before the larger Wegmans...

Oh yes, and in case you don't make it by this spot too often, here's what it looks like now.

And there you have some real filling in - as opposed to the fantasy that's usually part and parcel of this column.

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Model Sources:      4WTC

,      1WTC