The Valu of a Store Closing

One chain that I never really took a lot of pics of was Valu home centers. I'm not exactly sure why that is but I guess you could say that I took it for granted that it would be around for a while. Well, as you can see from the topic of this post, that is not the case. To give some background information, Valu home centers are a chain of 41 hardware stores- soon to be just 38- based out of Buffalo, NY. Valu expanded by opening stores in empty storefronts left behind by other companies closing. Valu is mostly in New York state, but has a few locations in northwestern Pennsylvania. 

One of the three stores closing, happens to be the one closest to me in Olean, NY- which is the topic of this post. The other two stores closing are in Warren, PA and Painted Post, NY. I'm uncertain what the Painted Post location was before being a Valu, but I'm fairly certain that Warren was a Jamesway. 

According to the nearby Bradford Era newspaper, when Valu opened the Olean location in 1970, it was the then largest Valu store in operation. It also occupied the space of 4 former stores in what was then a shopping plaza. One of those spaces was a Loblaw's supermarket- something of which I was surprised to learn.

Former Kmart #4936

NOTE: This blog post comes from outside the blog's coverage area. 

Our tour of all the Kmart stores in all of western Pennsylvania that I have visited concludes with a look at the Uniontown location. This location was originally opened as one of three PA Kmart supercenter locations, but was downsized in its final years and was also one of the select few stores to actually offer a K-fresh grocery department after its downsizing. Due to my visit occurring during the store's liquidation sale. you'll see signs for the K-fresh concept but sadly not what the concept looked like. 

One other unique thing this location had right up until the end and even for a bit of time after Kmart closed, was a locally operated diner. You can even see the evidence of the former connection point to Kmart in this picture via Google when it operated even after Kmart was gone. Eventually the diner would understandably relocate. While I don't have a lot of pictures of the diner, that Google link gives you a better look at what the interior looked like. As you should be able to see, a lot of the booths and tables were originally from Kmart that the diner was using which makes sense.

Pickup station was likely added in when the store downsized