Nicely Grocery

Commercial development in Alcoa continued to come slowly until about 1960. Retail business limited itself primarily to small grocery stores and other establishments along Lincoln and Rankin Roads; the businesses located in the Commercial Building and those on, or close to, Aluminum Avenue; and businesses along Wright Road in the Springbrook community. One of those businesses located its premises in the heart of the Springbrook community: Nicely's Grocery Store. In 1935 Babcock Lumber & Land Company decided to sell approximately 25 acres bounded by Vose Road, what was then Pike Street, old LaSalle Street, and oldLangley Street, a portion of the tract lying north of Vose Road. A part of this property later became home to the Alcoa Little League fields. After the city acquired the property from Babcock in 1939, A. C. Nicely paid $1,000.00 to purchase Lot 116, Block 812 at the corner of Vose and Wright Roads, where he built a brick grocery store to replace his former store located a short distance away on Wright Road. The upstairs of the new building became home to the Masonic lodge, which had previously been meeting upstairs in the Johnson and Law/J&K Store building on Lincoln Road, after the lodge had initially met in a Babcock office building