Kmart Number One Closing

[mtburb]

I thought with all it's history that the Garden City Kmart would be around forever. Apparently not...
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/bus...lose/96171522/

Five Detroit-area Kmarts are closing, including stores in Garden City...

It had a good 55-year run, but all good things must come to an end and soon we will have to forever say goodbye to the very first Kmart ever opened.

[Zacha341]

Wow! That article per title states that several Macy's stores are closing as well including the Eastland Macy's.

Some Detroit-area Macy’s, Kmart stores closing

This is can't be good for Eastland... see from article:

"It’s tough news for troubled malls and some major retailers.

Eastland Center is operating under bank ownership after former owner Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp. defaulted on $42.5 million in loans on the property, according to Trepp LLC, which follows commercial mortgage-backed securities."

[Hypestyles]

So what is to be done with all of these soon to be empty retail buildings?

[bust]

Attention Kmart shoppers. Someone uploaded their collection of Kmart in-store background music tapes to the internet. Vintage late 80's and early 90's...

https://archive.org/details/attentionkmartshoppers

[mikeg19]

I'm amazed Kmart is still in business, period.

[professorscott]

I'm amazed Kmart is still in business, period.

Kmart is still in business at all only because Mr. Lampert is willing to continue to throw his own money down the toilet. This astonishes me and has, so far as I have been able to figure out, no reasonable explanation; I cannot foresee any way in which he gets repaid for his largesse. Perhaps it's just an ego thing? Just speculating.

Neil Rubin's poignant description of KMart #1 in today's News is, unfortunately, about the same experience you'd have going into any KMart nowadays. Sears stores, which are under Mr. Lampert's same corporate umbrella, don't look much better. Apparently, when the Internet and more nimble bricks and mortar competitors start to repeatedly kick you in the ass, the preferred response is to curl up in bed in the fetal position covered with sheets and loudly repeating "LA LA LA LA LA". No investment in the stores, nothing that looks like a turnaround strategy or any strategy at all, no leadership, nothing. As Rubin said, the Amazon is not just a river anymore, and I'll add that denial is not just a river in Egypt.

[GMan]

So what is to be done with all of these soon to be empty retail buildings?

I have a relative that is affected by the Westland closing and they were told the purchaser has a plan in place for the building.

My relative has 60 days to decide what they want to do, relocate to 12 Oaks, go on unemployment or retire.

[Zacha341]

Yes, last I went to the one on Gratiot it was a ghost town and the shelves were poorly stocked and very run down. Good prices on otherwise over priced jewelry though.

I'm amazed Kmart is still in business, period.

[Scottathew]

Yes, last I went to the one on Gratiot it was a ghost town and the shelves were poorly stocked and very run down. Good prices on otherwise over priced jewelry though.

I had the same experience in Grayling, but the prices were NOT good. I was paying a premium for a crappy, run-down store.

[Detroit_uke]

It's karma...you cut workers' hours to less than 20 per week...therefore you shall have less than 20 stores per state. As for Macy's - you give them 20 hours per week and expect them to dress "fashionably"????? Spend their entire check on a wardrobe....karma. People aren't being paid a "buying wage." Used to be a store's employees were the best customers......not sorry to see any stores go.....

[Pat001]

I have fond memories of working in Kmart’s Tel-12 store in Southfield back in the 1970s. It was the most sociable place I ever worked in. We had a soft ball team in the summer, a bowling league all winter and we partied together almost every weekend. I never worked in another place where it was like that.

BTW, when I worked there, Kmart paid their employees in cash. I think their strategy was that we'd spend a good chunk of our pay in the store - and they were right.

[Wesley Mouch]

It's karma...you cut workers' hours to less than 20 per week...therefore you shall have less than 20 stores per state. As for Macy's - you give them 20 hours per week and expect them to dress "fashionably"????? Spend their entire check on a wardrobe....karma. People aren't being paid a "buying wage." Used to be a store's employees were the best customers......not sorry to see any stores go.....

No, its call business. Every single job has advantages and disadvantages. If the job isn't 'worth it', then employees go elsewhere. Company either adjusts or dies.

There were always crappy stores, and crappy workers. Sorting them out is just part of 'business'. Meanwhile, we customers can either spend at Macy's and KMarts... or not. Wonderful thing, this market thing.

[GPCharles]

Harry Cunningham is surely rolling in his grave.

[Honky Tonk]

Harry Cunningham is surely rolling in his grave.

As is Edward C. Kinsel.

[GPCharles]

What was Kinsel's relationship to Kresge and/or Kmart?

[RaumVogel]

Don't worry,everything will be delivered to you via drone.Until one day when you are put on the list.Then you can get used to Mars.

[Onthe405]

[[Unconfirmed) picture of Garden City store [[shortly after opening?). Being Detroit, some DY'r will be able to identify the latest model year of the cars seen in the pic:



Staged picture taken in 1975. This "open field" is actually where Somerset North stands today--directly across Coolidge from the former Kmart headquarters. In 2017, the very idea of a "new" Kmart is an oxymoron.

[GMan]

Ha that staged picture is great! People lined up before the paint is even dry on the board.

Should have included a blue light special sale in the picture too. Could have been for the Trax shoes that lasted about 1 week on a young man with a bicycle that liked to go fast and stop quick!

[G-DDT]

I'm amazed Kmart is still in business, period.

Keeping Middle America Really Tacky.

[G-DDT]

Attention Kmart shoppers. Someone uploaded their collection of Kmart in-store background music tapes to the internet. Vintage late 80's and early 90's...

https://archive.org/details/attentionkmartshoppers

Great! Many of that is what incessantly plays in the background of a mall when it's overrun with the zombie apocalypse.

[txlady]

I thought Kmart sold crappy goods back in the 70s, I can't believe they've held on this long. I still remember 'blue light specials', being dragged there by my parents.

[Sandhouse]

As for dating the black-and-white parking-lot picture, I may see a `62 Pontiac behind the `60 Caddy, but my eyes aren't good enough to tell. I'm going to guess early 1961. When did you last see a `61 Falcon?

It was a big event among my 7th-grade friends when the K-Mart opened at Groesbeck and Cass in Mt. Clemens around 1965. K-Mart was very close to the soul of discount-loving lower-middle class Clinton Township. I remember making regular trips there with my parents and later on my own, by bicycle. I'd pick up model car kits and slot-car parts and in the mid-1970's, tools to patch my Corvair together. I'm still using a few tools with K-Mart pricetags on them, so they weren't complete junk back then.

From reading retailing news in the 1990's, it sounded like K-Mart was torpedoed by its failure to build an information system that let it control its costs and inventories. That is what distinguishes Walmart and Target from failing retailers. I'm afraid the jury is still out on Meijer. Every time I wait in their slow-moving checkout line, or can't find something I know is on the shelf at Walmart or Kroger, I get a faint premonition of discount-store doom.