Soon to Be Former Kmart #7372

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

       Today we take a look at one of the last of two Kmart stores to exist in western PA, the location being Leechburg. This location likely held on due to no competition from Walmart or the like. This location and New Castle were the last holdouts of the Kmart brand across all of western PA. The next closest location still open in Pennsylvania with no immediate plans to close as of this post is Williamsport. This store kept a Little Caesars right up to at least last year's bankruptcy it would seem. This location is set to close it doors forever by the end of 2019.

Batavia's City Centre

While this mall is understandably no longer open to the public, it is still worth taking the time to highlight it and show some pictures from when it was open. This mall, opening in 1976 as Gennesee Country Mall, IS very similar to Meadville's Downtown Mall in the sense that it was a small downtown mall in a relatively rural area. The biggest difference between the two is that this mall only had a one anchor in JCPenney. The JCPenney would close in 2020. The mall had room for 37 stores with an interesting diagonal layout. (See the future plans document page 37 for the layout listed at the end of this post.)

I visited the site back in 2015 when it was still open to the public. It was obvious even way back then that it wasn't doing well. I saw evidence of roof issues as very few open stores. Perhaps one of the odder things about this mall was that it was connected to Batavia's City Hall, which I suppose kind of acted as an anchor.

Long term plans (see pages 37-39) call for the mall to be re-developed into a more attractive downtown setting.