It sure seems that 2025 has not been kind to retail. We've lost Big Lots (on a national level) and Party City. Forever 21 appears to be joining the store closing spree too. There's also JO-ANN fabrics, a chain that will soon be a memory. I stopped into my local JO-ANN the other day to see how things are going.
NOTE: This post comes from outside the blog's coverage area.
Crossing over the Appalachian mountains, our next Kmart tour brings us to Asheville, NC. There were two locations in this city- and the one we tour this month was an older store that expanded into the former Kmart foods space next door. It only featured a pharmacy, but it did have a cafe at one point. This location also had a detached auto center at one point. Both Asheville stores had a rarer decor package and this location was a rare normal store to have belt-driven checkout lanes. One quirk about this location is that the baby products (excluding clothing) were actually incorporated to be part of the pantry department. The building is vacant to my knowledge, but the Ingles supermarket chain reportedly owns the property, suggesting they may have future plans.
