K-Mart

[Ames#1171]

The first Super K-Mart in the country located in Medina, Oh is on track to be demolished and replaced by e Meijer Supercenter.

America's first Super Kmart may be demolished to make way for Meijer

[TheFugitive]

The Super K-Mart in Robinson Township, PA west of Pittsburgh was demolished around a decade ago.  Chevron had bought the property and was planning to build a new regional HQ there.  Then some political changes happened surrounding the shale fracking industry and they canceled those plans and sold the property.

The site is now being redeveloped with new housing.  This has led to a very strange situation where an Outback Steakhouse that was in the parking lot of the former Super K-Mart and has thus been standing in an empty lot for 10+ years now finds itself in the middle of a residential neighborhood.

[TheFugitive]

An abandoned Kmart store in Portland, Oregon burned to the ground in a spectacular fire, showering the neighborhood with potentially hazardous debris.

https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2023/07/large-fire-destroys-former-kmart-building-in-northeast-portland-firefighters-on-scene.html

The fire was apparently set by homeless squatters who were camping out inside the building. 

This is increasingly becoming an issue for vacant retail properties.  Squatters camping out likewise set a smoky fire inside the abandoned Century III Mall in Pittsburgh back in March.

[Retail_247]

A little off topic but whats kinda sad is that if you go to any posts on this form that are from the early days of the website (like 2005) to somewhere around 2010-2011 a lot of the posts on the threads have images which have since been lost. There's a ballpark estimated 95% chance that those photos were only on the forum and have since been lost forever and are nowhere else to be seen on the internet. It's like this on pretty much all of the topics but its mainly most prolific on the Kmart and Caldor topic.

Also not to mention that half of these photos are hosted on photobucket, which unfortunately is unreliable. Remember when they made all images on photobucket private unless you paid a subscription?

Its kinda sad how many photos on this website are lost.

At least the photobucket hosted images are still accessible as of now.

A lot of the later images upload to the forum (from 2011-2012) can still be accessed through the wayback machine

I took all of the older images of discount dept stores that I could find from this forum (as well as other sources such as Flickr, Facebook, Instagram, etc) and put them in the notes section of this Google Sheet:

https://retail247projecthub.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-retail-247-discount-store-list.html

[TheFugitive]

I have a picture I took the other day of the former Big Kmart in the Chartiers Valley Shopping Center in Bridgeville, PA.  It has been renovated and subdivided into a Burlington, a Ross Dress For Less and a Five Below, the latter two having just opened.  It seems Photobucket is dead so I'm going to have to look for some other place to host it.

[Rpameskmartfan26]

An abandoned Kmart store in Portland, Oregon burned to the ground in a spectacular fire, showering the neighborhood with potentially hazardous debris.

https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2023/07/large-fire-destroys-former-kmart-building-in-northeast-portland-firefighters-on-scene.html

The fire was apparently set by homeless squatters who were camping out inside the building. 

This is increasingly becoming an issue for vacant retail properties.  Squatters camping out likewise set a smoky fire inside the abandoned Century III Mall in Pittsburgh back in March.

That's just sad, wow. Another vintage Kmart to be demolished I guess.

[Retail Regents]

It's official: the Westwood Kmart is now closing in the fall.

https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/bergen/westwood/2023/08/02/kmart-in-westwood-to-close-last-one-in-new-jersey/70517276007/

[Crazybangles]

It's inevitable Westwood would eventually go. It's only a matter of time until the remaining 7 stores close as well... does anyone have any idea what is keeping those few stores open? Unless it has something to do with a multi-year lease on the property, I have no other ideas.