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| At only 54,150 sq. ft., this store is among one of the smaller stores. |
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| Excess merchandise finds a home in what was electronics |
Rating: 10 out of 10.
I honestly don't have a lot of complaints here. It was easy enough to navigate around the store, and while it is smaller and therefore carries less items, it offers enough of the basics to get you what you need. Given no immediate Walmart, this store seems to be doing rather well.
I was in this store a few years ago and noted the same, it's smaller and carries less. I was coming up through on Route 11 and hit about three K-marts looking to see if any of them still had some old stock of a particular item. This one didn't even have any sign of that line and it was a store brand.
ReplyDeleteFWIW, the other two stores I went to that night are closed or closing, Enola and Shamokin Dam.
I wonder if that garden shop area was once the restaurant?
Doubtful it had a restaurant to being with. Pretty sure Enola didn't either.
DeleteI'd say this one were safe from closure because nothing really competing in the area but I said the same thing about Enola too...
Given its smaller size, I can understand them carrying less than the typical Kmart.
DeleteI think the biggest difference between here and Enola is that Enola could of very easily been kicked out or Kmart simply wanted out of the Harrisburg market.
As for a restaurant, its hard to say for sure, but I do lean toward them probably not having one. I've been to a few of these smaller former Grants stores and they all typically use a similar layout. I would think those windows were simply for the garden area.
It had a restaurant, my dad managed this store for years with the kmart kafe
DeleteOh, thanks for confirming it did have one!
DeleteEnola is in a plaza with stores on both sides, I presume it was inherited or taken over from another chain. Like this store it's smallish, on my visit the aisles were rather narrow and crowded. Shamokin Dam was a large store and appeared to me to be built as a K-mart. It also was the busiest of the three stores.
ReplyDeleteBack to this location, not sure why they'd have a glass walled room with relatively fancy windows and a courtyard if it wasn't once a restaurant, perhaps for original tenant Grants. It doesn't look like any other store's garden shop. Pictures 37, 38, and some of it shows in 3 or Google Maps Streetview has a drive by of the whole front of the store.
There is one Wal-mart not too far down the road west of Bloomsburg.
As a side note, I see a Wall Street Journal report tonight Bon Ton has gone Chapter 11, unable to find an investor to help reorganize.
I went back to Google and looked at Enola again (been like five years) and actually it looks to be the same footprint as Berwick. However on the right side of the building where the restaurant looking area is, Enola appears to have a metal sided shed added on.
DeleteYes both Enola and Berwick were former Grants locations. While I won't be doing a post on Enola, Shamokin Dam will be next month's post.
DeleteYes, Bloomsburg isn't terribly far away if this store were to close, but I figure this probably does pretty well for Berwick.
Yep, a couple Bon Ton stores in the blog's coverage area, but I'm probably only going to get to one of them if any.
The same tile as the other converted Grants. Yeah, I guess Kmart just did the cheapest remodels possible when converting to Big Kmart (along with the addition of the Pantry), only replacing tile that absolutely needed to be replaced- it looks worse to me replacing sections than the whole thing, because it looks like you don't care how it looks. I mean sure, it may be in great shape physically, but it is definitely dated by being that lime green- a popular 60's and 70's color!!
ReplyDeleteKmart was known for doing little to stores they took over.
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