Sunday, May 1, 2016

Kmart #4434

As we look at another Erie area Kmart location, I'd like to make mention that I'm surprised Erie has not seen one of its three stores announced for closure. Sears Holdings seems to dropping the hammer on having multiple locations in same name town.1 Either way, closures will continue as I recently read an article saying that Sears Holdings would need close around another 300 stores to return to profitability. If those closures were to be only Kmart stores, that would leave only around 500 stores.

Anyway back to the topic of this post, which is about currently operating Kmart #4434 in Harborcreek.

Store #4434 opened its doors in 1969 to serve the east side of Erie.
As a '60s-built location, Kmart Foods was present here at one point. Kmart Foods was an early attempt to capture a supermarket next door to the actual store. Many of these would later become  separate supermarket chain, like Weis or other chains depending on where the building stood in the country. Sometimes Kmart absorbed the space to make a larger store or other chains, like Big  Lots here, would come in and take over the space.




Full exterior view of the store as seen from US 20 (Buffalo Rd)




Now for the interior:



You can't hide from me, former cafe.
Looks like the restrooms sign was replaced at some point.

The one 'T' doesn't seem to fit....
An open door to a closed portrait studio.

This layout in the corner is unique to this location, unless of course another store which I haven't been to has it. Cheektowaga, NY comes close, but not nearly the same.


Center Actionway
Random appliances in the back. Wouldn't be surprised to return to this store and find them taking over electronics like most stores do that now.

Wide Pantry Aisle
Back of the Store





This store's garden shop is rather small.

A nice little find.



The low-hanging pharmacy sign really grabs your attention or you might be able to grab it.

Harborcreek Kmart Customer Services


ICEE Machine
For some people these arrows lead to an escape; others use it just for exiting.

Rating: 7 out of 10. Although it is a pretty average Kmart, it seems to get good business. For that reason the score is bumped to be above average.

In Danger of Closing? I would assume that this store in particular probably does the least amount of business out of three Erie locations. This store still does good amount of traffic though, so its hard to say.
If it came down to being absolutely necessary, I personally would guess that this would be the Erie store that would close. That doesn't mean anything however.

Footnotes:
1. Unless of course that town is actually a major city such as Chicago or Miami, but even then some closures have been happening. I'm referring to a smaller sized city such as Erie, Zanesville, OH or Poughkeepsie, NY which both had multiple Kmart stores until recently.

3 comments:

  1. As far as that beck left corner goes, the Daytona Kmart's was also similar, but not exact. The difference there was that layaway would have been to the left of the restrooms in a small built out room rather than along the back wall like it was at this store.

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    Replies
    1. That seems to be a lot more common in older early stores. The final Erie store also does this same exact thing you described.

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  2. I would have tooken a little peak inside the portrait studio and took a pic, unless a staff person was there lol

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