“Socialization. We lost our socialization factor. Now
it’s hard to keep track of people, there’s no other place like it where you can
stand and chat.”
There used to be 28 churches of her United Methodist
denomination in the county, now there are six; there were seven bars in Welch,
all but one have closed; there were three cinemas, now it’s down to one; there
are no community centers left; many of the corner shops have gone. “There’s
nothing here,” McKinney says. McKinney has one other, rather astonishing, reason to
regret that the store closed. Walking. Walking? “I went to Walmart for the walk,”
What part do Big Box stores play in in your part of the country? in your life?
How has that been changing?
K-Mart and Sears Close in Lake County
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| The site of the former K-Mart Super Store which closed in 2016 |
The Sears store at the regional mall is supposed to be closing in mid-September. It anchors one end of the mall; the other anchors are Dillard's and Macys. The mall also has a Penny's and a Dick's store. The last was just build a couple of years ago to replace a smaller store nearer to me.
The former K-Mart was just across the road from Walmart. It had not been built when I arrived in 1989. There was a small K-Mart nearer to me. When that store was vacated for the Super Store pictured above, Lowes move in. About the same time we also got a Home Depot about 5 miles away.
Later a small mall was build between Lowes and K-Mart. It houses Kohl's and some smaller stores. For awhile it also housed Dick's and a Barnes and Noble.
More recently a Target store was build between me and Lowes. Staples also moved first in a location near to K-Mart, but then downsized to a smaller location across the street next to Walmart that had been occupied by my fitness center. That fitness center had moved to a large location on the farther side of the K-Mart building.
So in the past 25 years there has been a lot of change in these stores. I began to think how I have related to them over the time period.
In the 1990s I actually did a lot of my shopping around the country rather than around the county. During those years I annually went to professional meetings in places like Toronto, Boston, Washington, Minneapolis and Tampa Florida. Most of my books and CDs, two of my largest expenses, were bought from those places. But I also bought clothes. Collected Tilley hats in Toronto which got me a lot of favorable attention on the campuses of Notre Dame and University of Michigan. And I bought a lot of things from Ron Jon's Surf Shop in Cocoa Beach, Florida, near to where my aunt lived.
When I retired in 2003, I ceased to travel by airplane. From my previous buying patterns one would think that internet buying would be a natural replacement. However things are more complicated.
Amazon became the place where I buy almost all my books, and I have bought even more books since I retired because I have more time to read. However my buying of music CDs has greatly diminished. Largely that has been because of all the availability of classic music on the internet.
I have found that I do a lot more "entertainment" buying since I retired, and that tends to be clothes, and things for the house. I call it entertainment since it mainly gets me out of the house. Since I have a lot of dietary restrictions I don't eat out much. Of course when I went to professional meetings in the 1990s a lot of my shopping there was entertainment even though I had specific goals. I would visit a lot of stores where I had not intention of buying anything. I have not gotten into a lot of internet shopping because I use the computer for a lot of other things. So I like to get away from the computer to walk, garden, etc. Shopping is one of the etc.
This afternoon on the way to take the K-Mart picture, I stopped by Target, Kohls, and Walmart in search of a physical fitness item. No success. There were a lot of back to school and off to college specials, and some of the shoppers seemed to fit those categories. Target and Walmart have both been expanding their grocery selling areas. Kohl's and my grocery story have both recently put in special pick up areas for those shopping on line. Part of my aversion to shopping on line is that I like to see and touch things. Of course that does not matter much in the case of books.
There used to be a smaller Walmart near where we live, and I was in there a lot. Then they moved east of town and it's a Walmart Super Center. It's several miles away, though a little closer to where I work. But it's gotten so I avoid going there like it was a trip to the dentist. It's not a pleasant experience, and they try to push the self-checking lanes. I don't get paid to do their work. Might use the self-check if I got a discount for doing so.
ReplyDeleteI do my grocery shopping at Hy-Vee. It's pleasant and clean, doesn't look like a warehouse, has good meat and produce. I know quite a few people who work there. It's a little more expensive than Walmart, but they have a gas discount card, and it takes less fuel to get there.
I shop at Dollar General a lot, too. It makes more sense for empty nesters like us than the big box places like Sams or Costco.
My niece and her husband both work for HyVee in Dubuque, IA. I have shopped there and echo Katherine's kudos about the quality of their stores, products and service.
DeleteI wouldn't shop at Walmart if it were the only game in town. I'd drive to ANY other alternative. Love Costco for the same reasons as HyVee.
Unfortunately when all the stores start leaving a town it starts dwindling away, unless it is close enough to a bigger town to be a bedroom community. Young families especially don't stay where there are no goods or services.
ReplyDeleteI'm only aware of one Walmart store here and I've never been. Not sure how popular it is. I mainly go to three stores because I can't drive ... the grocery store (Raley's), Whole Foods, the hardware store (Emigh). All other stuff I buy online from Amazon, from lawnmowers to food to clothes.
ReplyDeleteOur village has two small towns about 7-8 miles due east and west. Both have viable downtown areas thanks to a real effort by the townsfolk to make parking easy and to hold events down there. The strip areas seems more fluid, with chains and big boxes duking it out. Always kind of a wasteland out there.
ReplyDeleteI would like to understand the economics that drives people to build new nondescript strip malls while down the street are vacancies in other already built nondescript strip malls.
ReplyDeleteOoh! I know this one! Most of these stores are chains or franchises built to certain specs, and it's cheaper to build a new structure to meet those specs.
DeleteSometimes repurposing can be done. Planet Fitness moved into the old Staples building near me. Bit Planet Fitness seemsmto be going bust. People want a Staples.
Family Dollar, which had been in some other buildings, left those digs and moved into new buildings built to chain specs. The shape and "design" of the big box is part of the branding.
Los Tres Amigos seem to be buying up a lot of Pizza Huts. Seems to be a strategy on their part, to incorporate the shape of the Pizza Huts into their corporate design.
NPR had a story on repurposing big boxes here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95788156
Maybe I'll get Christensen's book. Sounds interesting.
On, and smoke shops, grow shops, and marijuana dispensaries seem eager to get into many existing building. Gas stations, Dairy Queens, chiropractic offices, banks, electronic stores, Hot and Now outlets--all of these have been or are tobacco and dope shops.
DeleteAnd another thing is, the developer can get his dough out of a mall before it's all leased. And then some investor is stuck while the developer develops another mall which will help keep the first one unprofitable.
DeleteWhen I moved to Oregon for a few years, it was a surprise to find that alcohol wasn't sold at grocery stores but you had to go to special stores with bars on the doors, windows, to get it - it was an alcoholic beverage control state. I think it's changed since then, but maybe that's how some states will deal with weed.
ReplyDeleteFirst there was the department store. When Wanamaker opened in Philadelphia it had the best organ in town -- not for sale, just for coming and hearing.
ReplyDeleteThen came the mall -- cheap land, acres and cheap acres of free parking, where the people with cars and their children could gather and cavort while the department stores became less places of awe and splendor and more proletarian.
Then came the Big Box That Dare Not Speak Its Name in My House. And it had everything the mall had, but under one roof and cheaper (the Chinese price). It even encouraged overnight parking of campers and RVs, although it never became the social center the way the mall did. The mall went into decline and became a hangout for sketchy kids. The future of the mall probably is medical-related offices, pharmacies and appliances and kicky restaurants that last three to six months before something kickier comes along.
And now cometh Amazon, where there will be no social interaction, but we can all hole up in our caves and get everything from the OED to cold cream delivered to our doors and celebrate the joys of solipsism. Amen.
My cane-pounding resistance is to get my books by mail from Alibris and everything else from any mall-like store other than The Big Box That Dare Not Speak Its Name in My House. Alibris is some kind of coop of independent book stores whose employees are probably underpaid but loved and appreciated, unlike Amazon's.
Tom: checkout addall.com.
DeleteJM, Thanks. Looks promising.
DeleteWalmart is NOTORIOUS for wringing huge tax forgiveness deals out of areas desperate for their business and employment possibilities. Once the timeframe on the tax forgiveness is up they are also notorious for basically blackmailing the area, demanding extensions or threatening to shut down. They decimate local small business when they move in and, if and when they move out, they leave the local service area with little to nothing. Making AmuriKKKa grate agin!
ReplyDeletePlaces like Amazon help people with disabilities. Places like that make make a big difference in quality of life for people like me. I can read books again because of kindle. I can read them for free because Amazon has kindle library books. I can shop without being able to drive. I can read customer reviews of products and get input from others even though I'm alone. The list goes on.
ReplyDeleteYes, love my Kindle. Every book can be a big print book! I take all my school books to class on Kindle with embedded highlights/teaching notes. Also great for travel, though I don't do much of that any more.
DeletePlus I could not organize and dust the gigantic physical book collection I had. I boxed most of it up and sent it to the Unitarians who work with the prison libraries in Michigan. Raber gets most of his books from the liberry now. So the remainder only slightly exceeds space available, though what lurks in bankers boxes in the basement is anyone's guess.
I can also borrow books on Kindle.
I'm an Amazon shopper, too. Especially for Christmas gifts, it's a lot easier to find what the kids want. My husband just got a Roku stick today. Hopefully maybe we can go down to basic cable now.
DeleteJean, is your library a member of Overdrive and Zinio? I check out e-books and magazines on my Kindle that way.
Our state has started charging sales tax for Amazon purchases. Which I think is fair, since the brick and mortar stores have to pay it.
DeleteI use OverDrive at the library too. I haven't checked out a "real" book for a long time, just electronic files - kindle books and also audio books which I listen to in my browser. So convenient! My sister and I go to the library every week still, though. She still mostly gets real books and I look for movie DVDs :)
ReplyDeleteAll the Lake County stores(including the regional Mall) mentioned in my post are located along US Route 20 which goes from coast to coast. In Mentor it is Mentor Avenue, and in Cleveland it is Euclid Avenue. Euclid used to be millionaires row, and is where the Cleveland Clinic is.
ReplyDeleteInterstate 90 runs parallel about 10 miles from Lake Erie. Ohio SR 2, an interstate like road runs parallel about 4 miles from Lake. US 20 runs parallel about 7 miles from Lake Erie. It could be considered just one long strip mall as the business center of the county with homes both more toward the lake and toward the hills where Interstate 90 is located. A lot of it in Lake County has the character of a strip mall.
However the Mentor Avenue section in Mentor has been managed well. It is five lane with a turning lane. There are sidewalks and trees along most of it which provide a break before the parking lots of the various stores. There is a vegetation area with some eating places which provides a border between Mentor avenue and the K-Mart parking lot in the photo.
In some ways its more like a downtown street for cars rather than for walking. That is you go from one parking lot to the next parking lot like you were walking. You can however walk, and there is bus service along this road which also goes to Lakeland Community College. The parking lots of the stores along Mentor and their store fronts give a much nicer appearance than the big parking lot of the regional mall where all the activity is inside the mall.
The regional mall until recently has had the best access to the Interstate and SR 2. But that changed last fall when the final link of a four lane road from SR 2 south to Mentor Avenue was complete. Ironically this occurred several months after the closing of K-Mart. Essentially it goes right to the doorstep of K-Mart and Walmart. It probably would not have helped K-Mart much since it was a terrible place to shop. I avoided it only a little less than Walmart. However it may be prime property for some other chain, perhaps even a grocery superstore. There a lot of activity going on in that area.
I live in the suburbs of DC. Big box stores in our area are pretty limited in the closest suburbs to DC (inside the beltway) - Home Depot, Staples, and Barnes and Noble. As you get farther from the city, into the second and third tiers of communities around the beltway, more big box stores show up in the strip malls, but they are at least 30 - 40 minutes out (non rush hour traffic) and include Target, Lowe's and Costco. There was a K-Mart in the shopping center with the Lowe's, but I think it has closed. Going even farther out, there is a very large shopping center that has a bunch of big box stores in one place - Target, Staples, Home Depot and Walmart among others. I never shop at that mall because it is too much of a drive. I also have ambivalent feelings about supporting Walmart due to their employment practices and probably wouldn't shop there much even if it was a lot closer to my home than it is. In rural areas I can see that Walmart is a mixed blessing - providing jobs and lower cost goods. But the jobs are usually minimum wage and have no benefits, and, as noted in the article, if the store was given tax breaks to move in, and then closes when those tax breaks are gone, the community is back where it started, or perhaps even farther back than where it started. The close in malls in my area tend to have higher end stores - Macy's, Nordstroms, Lord and Taylor, Saks, Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdales and lots of smaller store chains targeting specific groups (older women and teens especially - Chico's, Gap,Abercrombie, etc). The most recent trend is tearing down the once traditional covered, indoor malls and replacing them with new "town center" mixed use shopping areas, with a "main street", shops, restaurants etc, and condos and apartments above the retail and food establishments. Definitely no big box stores allowed. I don't shop much. I no longer work, so need few clothes, I gave most of my business clothes away a oouple of years ago to a local group that helps women who are recently released from jail, and others from disadvantaged backgrounds, by providing interview clothes for free, and affordable work wardrobe clothes in good condition that are for sale in their shop. When I do shop, it is usually online.
ReplyDeleteI shop the resale stores in the ritzy Lansing suburbs first. A lot of these places have sprung up in the strip mall spaces.
Delete"The most recent trend is tearing down the once traditional covered, indoor malls and replacing them with new "town center" mixed use shopping areas, with a "main street", shops, restaurants etc, and condos and apartments above the retail and food establishments. Definitely no big box stores allowed. "
ReplyDeleteCleveland has experimented with it. There was a new place on this model built right next to the Beachwood Mall, one of the main regional malls slightly inside the Cleveland beltway. The new place has had a very rocky time, several closed stores. It now includes a hotel; maybe the captive market will help. The Dicks store is much larger than even the new one in Lake County. There are several good home fashion stores, generally upscale. I often go there in February; it is a nice cabin fever break, and cheaper than flying to Florida.
Since last March, Amazon now charges sales tax for every state that has sales tax.
ReplyDeleteI know the traditional covered indoor malls are probably bad for the environment, on account of being energy hogs to heat and cool, but I miss them. I live where it's really hot in the summer and really cold in the winter. It was nice to go shopping in those indoor malls. The kids liked them, too, to play arcade games and hang around in the music stores (that was before all the downloadable stuff).
ReplyDeleteIndoor malls have been popular places for individuals and groups to walk. There ae some malls that encourage these people to show up around 9am when most of the stores in the mall open at 10am.
ReplyDeleteA church group here used to walk the beach in good weather and the indoor mall in poor weather.
When I was a teen we would hang out at the nearby shopping malls on the weekends. One of them was an outdoor mall called Town & Country Village. So much happened there - we got our cat Shrimpus from the pet store, I got my ears pierced at the jewelry store, my sister got a jog at the art supply store, our family would often eat at the doughnut shop and the deli there, and when I was in college, I showed some of my paintings at the annual art show they have. Here's a photo.
ReplyDeleteTimely video in NYTimes today. An Ode to Shoppihg Malls
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/26/fashion/an-ode-to-shopping-malls.html?emc=edit_nn_20170727&nl=morning-briefing&nlid=79541265&te=1