Remembering What Was There : Packard's

A new large Quik Check has opened on Hackensack Avenue. It is a sleek place with a convenience store that makes sandwiches. There is ample parking and a number of gas pumps. Very modern. Very driver friendly.

It is just up the street from the Target store, another modern structure that also offers convenience and good prices. And familiarity. When one walks into a Target store they know where departments will be from one store to anther - because the lay-out will be the same.

Very different from the iconic Packard's (Packard Bambergers that was there). Fairway likes to describe itself as "Like No Other Market". That slogan would have definitely applied to Packard's - it, in fact, was like no other market.

Frank W. Mr. Packard joined with Edgar Bamberger in 1933 to start the Packard-Bamberger & Company department store in an old wallpaper factory on Hackensack's Main Street. Mr. Bamberger was a brother of the founder of the Bamberger department store chain.

Packard-Bamberger, which was designed to be a one-stop shopping center, offered customers products ranging from foodstuffs to furs, from liquor to lingerie, from hardware to beauty products.

t was a different kind of store.

Bill Ervolino wrote a wonderful 2012 "Then and Now" column for The Record. It can be found at -this Hackensack, NJ Community Message Board posting (hackensacknow.org).

Though it has been gone for almost 30 years, Packards has not been forgotten.

Here are some recollections:

"The Whole Foods of its time", said one.

Not even close, Packard's was somethiong special - like no other market - long before Fairway would use the phrase in Paramus.