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The Big Bear supermarket at Huntington's Fairfield Plaza
opened April 8, 1959. Today
the site of the former store is part of the parking lot at Cabell Huntington
Hospital.
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HUNTINGTON --
For nearly 50 years, local residents who needed to pick up some groceries
could
jot down their shopping lists and then head to their favorite Big Bear.
Founded in
Columbus, Ohio, in 1933, Big Bear Stores was a major regional supermarket chain.
At its peak the chain operated 70 supermarkets in Ohio, West Virginia and
Kentucky -
including three in Huntington and one in Ceredo.
Big Bear was
one of the first self-service supermarkets in the Midwest and prided itself at
being the
first supermarket in the country to use cashier-operated motorized
conveyor belts. It introduced
shopping
carts in its stores in 1937 at a time
when the carts were still something of a novelty.
Like many other stores,
Big
Bear had a trading stamp program. For years collecting
their orange and blue
"Buckeye"
stamps was a passion for many shoppers.
The chain
opened its first Huntington store on April 8, 1959, at the Fairfield Plaza
shopping center
on 16th Street (today's Hal Greer Boulevard). Grand opening
festivities included a group of
performing
bears and an appearance by former
heavyweight boxing champ Rocky Marciano.
In 1962, Big
Bear opened a second Huntington store in a new shopping center at 115 6th Ave.,
the site of the former Huntington Memorial Hospital. In 1976, it opened at the Ceredo Plaza
shopping
center. In 1981, it opened at 5th Avenue and 29th Street
in a sprawling building
that was vacated
when Sears, Roebuck & Co. moved its
store
to the then-new Huntington Mall at Barboursville.
In 1989, Big
Bear was acquired by a Pennsylvania chain, Penn Traffic, that soon encountered
mounting financial troubles and filed for bankruptcy. In an effort to emerge
from bankruptcy,
Penn Traffic agreed to sell or close all the Big Bear stores.
Today, the
site of Huntington's first Big Bear is part of the parking lot at Cabell
Huntington Hospital, the
1st Street store is now a Food Fair supermarket, the
Ceredo Plaza location now houses Harbor Freight
Tools
and a Food Fair and the
former 29th Street store is now the St. Mary's Education Center.
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Note: This Article and picture appeared in the Herald-Dispatch Newspaper on Jul. 13, 2015
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