What Happens to Abandoned Stores

[Mobil]

Albertsons wasted their Houston stores, many of which were new, in early 2002. They either sold them to Kroger (a monopoly) or closed just for them to become offices. The abandoned one near me is pretty much a dump:
mold is growing in the detention pond, a potential health hazard.
the labelscar was painted over. The store is now an ugly purple and looks very old.
The store is boarded up.
The Arby's in the parking lot, which was added after the store opened in 2000, has also closed. It now sits abandoned and has been painted an ugly blue.
Shady stores have opened in the plaza.
Ambulances now idle on the property.
The parking lot was torn up for road work and is now badly patched.
There are clothing drop boxes in the parking lot.
As you can see with Terraserver, the roof of the store has "tanned".

A Randalls that opened in 1999 and closed in 2001 still sits abandoned not far away.

[XDeSuEhTX]

Around here they just sit there for a long time, sometimes the better part of a decade. Until something new comes along, remodels, and moves in.

I have a feeling the Value City building is going to be empty for quite a while. Goody's I don't know about... it's a pretty new building, I think something will move in pretty quickly.

We have a local mall that has sat empty for nearly 15 years, but it's still open as there is still one anchor and two in-mall stores left. The other two anchors have been remodeled to be seperate from the mall portion. Some of the former store spaces in it have been remodeled and merged into one large space, then abandoned.

We also had another shopping center recently revitalized after a ten year vacancy with some new stores, TJ Maxx and a Hobby Lobby.

Although, in our down-town portion, all the really old stores were demolished in the last few decades. The multi-story buildings that used to be stand-alone Montgomery Ward's, JC Penny, G.C. Murphy, and a few others... I was too young to remember them really, but they're all gone now, as a lot of our historic down-town now is.