rastaking wrote:
Here are some facts which really helped to stoke my interest:
1. 15 years ago, Wawa (a Philadelphia convenience store chain) started selling their own gas. A few years later, they started a campaign to replace all their older locations (mostly from the 60's) with gas ones. I still think of a lot of their late 90's stores as "new", but many are now showing their age! The newer one in Lancaster didn't last long and is now an independent gas station/c-store. I wonder what happened because I've never heard of Wawa closing a newer store. But a lot of the very small, low-volume old ones have been sold to other companies. For example, the one in Drexel Hill PA (which still has two older Wawas very close together) became a "Welsh Farms" in 2002. I can't believe it's been 10 years now. Ironically, the also very old and small Wawa in Wallingford PA got the chain's new logo in 2004, but became a "Pantry 1" in 2007.
2. Even though Chevron bought the Texaco name and Texaco refineries, Shell bought most Texaco stations (and renamed them) in the past decade. Ironically, most current Texaco stations were converted to that name from brands such as Mobil, which had to sell many stations when Exxon bought it. And coincidentally (or maybe not, maybe the two had the same design firm) a lot of Texaco station signs by the road were easily converted to the Shell look, because their shape was identical to existing Shell signs!
3. The Eckerd drugstore chain bought Thrift Drug, a Philadelphia chain, along with its "small town" division Fay's, in 1997. All the Thrift Drug and Fay's stores were converted to the Eckerd name and remodeled (a VERY expensive move), but Eckerd still decided to build drive-thru stores to replace many of these no later than 2000. I think this was the primary reason for Eckerd's own downfall (half the company sold out to Rite Aid, and the rest CVS). Dozens of the older locations, many of which never found a place to move to, ended up closing in disgrace in the 2000s. It's a shame because Thrift Drug had built a huge batch of stores in 1996, most of which crashed and burned (sales wise), prompting the sale to Eckerd, and even after adopting the famous chain's business model couldn't compete.
4. Acme, the Philadelphia grocery chain, built some really nice stores with a pointy roof and stained glass windows in the 60's, but most of them had to be expanded (also remodeled on the outside, hiding the pointy roof) in the late 70's to keep up with competitors which were also growing rapidly.
5. Genuardi's, the Philadelphia grocery chain which just sold out to arch-rival GIANT, was still using their 1950s logo (the chain was still very small during that time) in the chain's "glory days" of the late 80's and early 90's. But in 1995, a new logo was introduced, and all traces of the old one quickly disappeared.
6. Albertsons built two stores on Spring-Cypress Road in Spring Texas in 1991. The two were identical inside, but looked very different on the outside. One was much fancier than the other. It had a "copper castle" look and is still open today as a Kroger. But the other one had to close for good in 2002 and has been empty 10 years now. Kroger would have bought this one but it was too close to an existing Kroger which was more modern.
7. The very last new Safeway in Houston was built in 1984, but Safeway sold its Texas stores to a chain called AppleTree in 1988. This chain failed in 1993, and this particular location was later a Randalls, but closed in 1998 when Randalls and its Dallas division Tom Thumb were bought by, ironically, Safeway! Then this location was an H-E-B Pantry Foods, but closed when H-E-B shut down their Pantry Foods division in 2002. Finally, after four different grocery chains used it, this building is now a Stein Mart clothing store. Three Safeway/AppleTree stores in small towns near Houston also became H-E-B Pantry Foods, but without the Randalls detour in between, and have since been demolished for much larger H-E-B stores. After a delay of a few years, H-E-B has built a new store in a brand new plaza across from the Safeway one.
8. Wal-Mart built a store in The Woodlands (a small town near Houston TX) in 1984, but moved across the street to a new store in 1990. The old one became a "Bud's Discount City" (a Wal-Mart clearance outlet) but this Bud's closed in 1994, before the rest of the chain. Ironically the store was later a Ben Franklin Crafts, which closed in 1997, the same year as the remaining Bud's stores folded. There was also a Kmart practically next door to this original Wal-Mart, and only a narrow street separated the two. The Kmart was remodeled in 1990 in response to Wal-Mart upgrading, but closed in 1994 at the same time as the nearby Bud's. Hobby Lobby (a chain which could be blamed for the demise of Ben Franklin Crafts) is in the former Kmart today. The 1990 Wal-Mart here was unique because it had the plain hyphen logo on the front, and never got the more famous logo with a star in the middle (not the newest "Walmart" with a star logo). Other than this, it matched almost all other 90's Wal-Mart stores. But in 2007 the store moved again, to a Supercenter, and was ironically one of the company's last new stores to have the 1992 star logo and "Supercenter" in the name.
9. Dixie Square Mall, one of the first enclosed malls in the USA, opened in Harvey, Illinois (near Chicago) in 1966. One of the first JCPenney stores in a mall (when the chain was still called "Penneys") was its main anchor. All the stores in the mall closed in stages between 1974 and 1979 due to a huge spike in area crime. Many towns in America never even had a mall until the mid-late 70's if not 80's or early 90's. The whole mall was abandoned for over 30 years until its recent demolition.
10. Wal-Mart and many grocery chains (along with Michaels Arts & Crafts) stopped using foam ceilings in their new stores starting around 1995. They started using "warehouse" ceilings similar to the ceilings at stores such as Home Depot and Lowe's. I find it amazing how the Genuardi's in Lansdale PA, which had the older design, sits empty (probably with those old "tube" lights still running) but the identical (inside) Genuardi's in Glen Mills PA was torn down for a Whole Foods, which has a warehouse ceiling. Most Genuardi's built after Safeway bought the chain had warehouse ceilings though.
Dixie Square Mall was selected for a location shortly after its closing for the chase scene early in the 1979 Blues Brothers movie
In my hometown of Riverside CA the larger shopping center was Riverside Plaza; originally a single level row of stores, save for the Montgomery Ward and Sears anchors which had 3 floors, with the Ward's featuring a respectably sized coffee shop.
Ironically the Plaza was semi-enclosed, the shops accessed by an open courtyard in the fashion of today's Mills Corporation properties. In the mid-1980s it was converted into a fully enclosed mall while the Ward's ditched the coffee shop and a large buffet chain installed themselves directly across the street from a long-established Sir George's buffet.
After the success of Ontario Mills and the transformation of The City Shopping Center in Orange CA from a fully enclosed mall to The Block (now known as The Outlets) At Orange in the late 1990s, the Riverside Plaza underwent a 2 year closure for demolition and rebuilding in a likeness of its original footprint. Sadly, to me the Chipotle Grill that occupies a tenancy there does not represent or elicit the original character of the shopping center
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Let's go on out and take a moped ride, and all your friends will thing your brain is fried, but you can't live your life too dirty, 'cause in the the end you're born to go 30
20 Aug 2012, 10:53 pm
