It has been 5 years since the Super Kmart/Kmart Supercenter in Lorain, Ohio closed down in September, 2016. Having a camera always on hand and realizing that this was only 1 of 4 such stores left in the country, I decided to document the closing process for myself. Well, fast forward to 2021 and with the brand itself on the verge of going out of existence (the last Super K, in Warren, Ohio closed in 2018), I figured it may be a good idea to post my photos and story online as a means of historical preservation of a brand that is about to become a memory.
I
began my career at the Lorain Super Kmart Center mid-way through
college as an overnight stocker with the intention of working my way
through college by night, attending classes by day, and then leaving
upon landing a job in my chosen field upon graduation.
That
didn't happen. I ended up working at Kmart for 10 years until it was
announced that the store was going to be closing in September,
2016. I landed another job in August and was not around to see the
final tear down after closure. But from May into August, there was a
lot to see and, after being with the store so long, a lot to stare at
in total disbelief.
For
a bit of history, the store opened in 1993 after Kmart decided to
close its aging Amherst store and relocate just across the Lorain
border. The Amherst store was a standard Kmart but the new Lorain
store was an all-in-one hypermart, adding a full grocery department
along with fresh foods and not to mention a lot of floor space.
I
remember the store when it first opened. It was absolutely enormous,
far bigger than any other store in the area. About the only thing
bigger than the store itself were the crowds. Despite living less
than a 5 minute drive from Super Kmart, we hardly ever shopped there
because we didn't want to have to deal with the crowds. It took a
really good sale to get us through the doors, only to often find
whatever the sale item we wanted was out of stock. Talking to
coworkers who had been there from the start, I learned that doing
$400,000 a day in sales (roughly 800,000 in 2020) was the norm upon
opening and that it was virtually impossible to stock on 3rd
shift as customers would often pull merchandise straight off the
pallets. As for the merchandise that did make it to the shelf, it
didn't stay there long. The store stayed busy 24/7.
Starting
in the mid 2000s, we finally decided to try Kmart again. More
businesses had gone in and the crowds were not as large as they used
to be. There were a lot of good sales at the store and that, along
with the fact that the crowds were smaller and the sale merchandise
was no longer sold out in the first day, kept us coming back.
Interestingly, I learned of the overnight job openings on a sales
receipt.
In
my 10 years there, I got a front row seat of what could only be
called the slow death of the Lorain Super Kmart. The first year or so
there the store was extremely busy. It was the norm to have between
8-10 pallets of freight a night in my departments. The store would
typically stay busy into the 2am hour, get pretty quiet from around
3-5am, and then start to pick up again in the 5am hour. Holiday eves?
The store was busy all night.
The
first obvious blow came in 2008 when the economy crashed in the fall.
Following the recession, there was plainly a lot more seasonal
merchandise getting marked down on clearance than there had been the
previous year. To make matters worse, a lot of the ordering was done
automatically by computer based on the previous year's sales.
Needless to say, it took a year to play catch-up with the lower
sales, which made 2008 the year of the clearance department.
The
next punch came in 2009 when a Super Walmart moved in less than a
mile down the street. Knowing what was coming, a lot of coworkers
were predicting the end of Kmart before Walmart even opened. Yes,
Walmart hurt our business going into the 2009 Christmas season, which
meant more clearance merchandise. However, come the following spring,
business was bouncing back as the novelty of the new Walmart was
wearing off.
2010-2011
were pretty steady years, albeit not at the volume of the
pre-recession years. Good news in 2010, the same year I switched from
stocker to checkout supervisor, was the addition of a Little Caesar's
in the old floral area. In addition, we got a lot of new fixtures in
the fashions area as well as in fresh foods. Fashions was now graced
with modern-looking 2 and 3-tier tables as well as mannequins while
produce, bakery, and deli got wooden display shelves. The biggest
aesthetic improvement was in produce, where attractive wooden tables
replaced clunky-looking metal bunkers. There was even talk of getting
new outdoor signs that would be around twice the height of the
current ones, which would make the store visible from nearby OH-2/90.
However, that never came to pass.
Despite
the improvements, all was not well. News that Sears Holdings, Kmart's
parent company, was not doing so well came in early 2011 after it was
announced that over 100 Kmart stores would close nationwide thanks to
poor Christmas sales across the company in 2010. Knowing that we were
still doing pretty good and the fact that we were the only Kmart
within nearly an hour radius, there wasn't too much worry.
Going
into 2012, what was the biggest wallop, at least for the overnight
business, came in the form of an announcement that the store, which
had been open 24 hours since the start, would no longer be 24 hours.
Instead, all the Super Kmarts in the country would close at midnight
and reopen at 6am. For the stock crew, the only change was a
shortened shift, from 10-7 to 10-6, because we no longer would have a
1 hour lunch thanks to the fact that we would be locked in overnight
and thus would need to be paid for the entire time we were there. As
for the cashiers, those who didn't come to stock or quit were sent to
days. I switched from checkout supervisor back to stock to stay on
3rd shift. The night closure started just past Easter and
went through the summer, robbing us of our peak months for overnight
business as the warm weather meant that people stayed up, and
shopped, later. Good news came in August when it was announced that
our store would go back to being 24 hours just in time for Labor Day.
The bad news was that the 24-hour signage wasn't put back and the
return to 24 hours was poorly publicized. The answering message on
the store phone? It continued to say that we were closed from
midnight to 6am for almost a month after reopening to 24 hours. In
the end, we were back to 24 hours but the damage was done as
overnight business was never be the same again as a lot of shoppers,
including many regulars, had converted to Walmart.
From
here on out, it was all pretty much downhill as the store became
slower and slower as evidenced by the checkouts surviving on less and
less staffing and less and less straightening of the sales counters
that needed to be done overnight. The amount of freight we got in
also started to noticeably go downhill, too. By the time the closure
was announced, 4 pallets was a heavy freight night for one area. The
times of rushing to get one's freight done, trash thrown away, and
returned merchandise put back where it needed to go were a distant
memory.
One
highlight in the 2012 to closure time period was news that the Lorain
store would be used for online order fulfillment. Instead of shipping
from warehouses, Sears Holdings started using stores to fulfill
online orders as it attempted to tap into the online shopping market
without needing to open dedicated online order fulfillment
facilities. This started in fall of 2013, just in time for the
Christmas season. The demand was huge, so much so that, for the only
time in my career there, we were allowed overtime. One week I worked
over 62 hours. Unfortunately, this was not to last as, after
Christmas, the store hired a bunch of people just for the purpose of
taking care of online order processing. Another bright spot: the
addition of a Rad Air auto repair shop in the old Penske truck rental
area in 2013. True, aside from drawing in people who may shop
in the store while their car was being worked on, Rad Air did not
bring in direct money but it was still good to have a tenant moving
in, rather than out, for a change.
The
final few years just had me really shaking my head at the conditions
of the store. Thanks to Obamacare, all part timers were limited to 29
hours come the start of 2014, shifts were shortened to 7 hours, and
no new people were hired (on 3rd shift, anyway) to pick up
the slack. This problem was compounded by what many people thought
would be the store's lifeline, the online orders. Why? People who
were scheduled to work the floor were pulled to work on order
fulfillment. Result: the store conditions went downhill even though
less people were shopping. The store was often quite the mess
compared to the way it had looked just a few years previously.
Customer service also suffered because there were often just a few
people actually on the floor.
Being
limited to 29 hours after years of working around 40 forced me to
find a second job. I got in with the company that cleaned the store,
which provided a unique perspective to witness the store's decline.
The best indicator of how much business was coming in the doors? The
amount of bathroom supplies used on a daily basis. Second best: the
amount of trash. By the end, we spent more time trying to look busy
than actually cleaning the store.
In
addition to the cluttered look and lack of customer service
available, another put-off for shoppers was the building itself. With
Sears Holdings in dire straights financially, corporate was never in
any hurry to pay for building repairs. The roof was full of leaks and
whenever it rained outside, it probably would rain inside somewhere,
too. Little Caesar's dough machine was breaking down a lot, which
meant no pizza, early closings, and a lot of people taking their
money elsewhere. Coolers and freezers were constantly having problems
and merchandise was having to be rushed back to the stockroom
freezers and coolers where people couldn't buy it. One night in the
middle of winter, we actually pushed the cooler merchandise out to
the outdoor garden area in shopping carts because it was so cold that
the food would stay okay. On top of that, several coolers and
freezers on the sales floor leaked and had to be surrounded with rags
and rolls of paper towels at their bases so as to keep the sales
floor dry. The bathrooms were a mess as some of the toilets leaked at
the base. One bathroom even had a leaky pipe under the tile and the
floor was always wet from water bubbling up through the concrete
slab. Out of order signs and plumbers became regulars. For probably
close to 6 months starting around Christmas, 2013, the only lights in
the parking lot were 2 portable diesel powered light towers as
something had happened to the electric supply line. As a whole, the
store simply looked dirty and outdated. In comparison, the Giant
Eagle in Amherst, opened in 1996, still looks like new (and is still
doing good business, to boot!).
Of
all the problems above, one that out-did them all were the cash
registers. As old as the store, they were constantly freezing up
during transactions. This was probably due in large part to all the
programs that were loaded onto them throughout the years as computer
technology was obviously much more primitive in the mid 1990s than in
the mid 2010s. In fact, the software used to run the store dated to
the late 1980s. Needing to reboot the register wiped out everything
that had been scanned and meant that everything needed to be scanned
again once the register came back up. To make matters worse, the
tendency to run slow and freeze increased when the store was busy as
the system obviously couldn't handle everything at once. The store
was essentially using late 80s technology up until its close in 2016,
not good. In the final year of operation, the problems got so bad
that the entire system would crash and getting back online never had
certain time frames. Probably at least a half dozen times (that I
know of) we had to close because we couldn't sell anything and had no
idea when the problems would be fixed and the registers would be
operable again. Needless to say, it isn't fun showing up to work at a
locked building and having to call the customer service desk in order
to be let in.
In
all, going into 2016, things were not good. The store was typically
like a ghost town by midnight, even on the weekends. To make matters
worse, Dollar General stores were popping up like weeds all over the
Lorain area, draining more of our business. Kmart made an
inexplicable move when it stopped carrying anything to do with video
gaming and computers in early 2015. The electronics section virtually
died. As if customer service was not being neglected enough already,
what can only be described as a purge of full time hourly workers
took place in 2015 as roughly a third of full timers were let go on
corporate orders as a cost cutting measure. In the following months,
a lot of the remaining full timers either took buyouts or found other
jobs. Another purge of remaining full timers took place a few months
later. Hundreds of years of combined experience and knowledge were
lost and what positions were retained became part time for the most
part. As bad as things were, we were the only Kmart for a wide radius
and we were doing way more business than the Sears store in
neighboring Elyria.
In
January, 2016, we stopped 24 hour operations again, now being open
from 7am to 11pm. Stock stayed as overnight, though, so I stayed put.
More bad news came when it was announced that the big stockroom
freezer and cooler units for perishable food storage would be shut
down. Refrigerated food would be moved into the milk cooler and the
bakery would now have to share a freezer with prepackaged frozen
merchandise. Between overnight closing and the stockroom
freezer/cooler shutdowns, I really was wondering whether the store
would survive the year as a Super Kmart, if at all. We all held our
collective breaths. On April 23, it was announced that the Lorain
Super Kmart, only 1 of 4 left in the country, would close in
September.
The
text from my parents asking if I heard that the Lorain Super K was
closing had to be the biggest surprise that I ever had the
displeasure of waking up to. Sadly, the only thing that surprised me
was that the Elyria Sears store wasn't closed down first.
For
roughly the first month after the closing was announced, it seemed as
though the whole store would not be closing. The hours were unchanged
and the weekly ads continued to circulate as normal. Looking closely,
though, things were starting to change. The Ohio Lottery machines got
pulled, layaway stopped accepting new orders and became payment and
pickup only, gift cards and magazines (save Sears gift cards) were
pulled and, to me, most surprisingly, online order fulfillment was
shut down. Little Caesar's, which was set to remain open through
Memorial Day, got shut down early, before Mother's Day. So much for
free lunches (they often left 3rd shift the leftover
pizza).
Things
began to noticeably change come mid May. The first big change was in
the ads. The weekly circulars ceased and were replaced by a
store-exclusive 'customer appreciation sale.' Appreciate the
customers for what? Not shopping at the store and putting us all out
of work? Thus gone were the item by item sale signs, replaced with
blanket markdowns of entire departments of varying percents off the
regular price. The pharmacy also shut down before the end of May,
directing now- former customers across the street to Walgreen's. The
so-called 'customer appreciation sale' ran for about a month,
concluding in mid June, at which point the store 'went dark' for
about a week before the official liquidation sale commenced.
Supposedly, liquidation sales in the state of Ohio are limited to 90
days, thus the delay that would push the conclusion to mid September,
which was when the store was set to close. Then came an item of
absolute laughter: 'now hiring' signs went up along with 'store
closing' signs. Why? Management had foreseen (correctly) a mass
exodus of workers.
For
the most part, June was business as usual by all appearances, albeit
all of the 'liquidation' signs.
By
the time July rolled around, it was clear that the store was closing.
Little Ceasar's was now cleared of all equipment, the
stock-especially in what could be termed as 'essentials' (grocery and
health and beauty) were rapidly selling down, and empty areas of the
vast 200,000 square foot store were becoming marketplaces for hugely
overpriced (I wanted to buy some!) store fixtures. The stockroom was
now bare as what can only be described as a gross excess of hardlines
and especially fashions inventory was finally moved to the sales
floor as merchandise began to sell down. Hardlines and fashions were,
by all appearances, normal thanks to the fact that our excess
inventory could finally be moved to where people could buy it.
By
the time August arrived, Lorain Super Kmart was a shell of its former
self. Bakery, deli, meat, dairy, frozen, and produce were all history
while dry grocery was hanging on by a thread. Hardlines and fashions?
They were still pretty full as, during the liquidation process, the
liquidator had brought in a ton of non-Kmart merchandise, which
quickly filled the shelves and prevented these areas of the store
from going barren (thus the lack of pictures as obvious changes were
lacking). August also witnessed the departure of our last front-end
tenant, U.S. Bank, which left at the start of the month. Ironically,
there was a sign redirecting customers to the U.S. Bank located in
the Super Walmart, less than a mile down the road. By mid month, most
of the grocery side of the store had become a fixture-mart, full of
old store fixtures still priced at far more than one would expect at
a liquidation sale.
It
was at this time, mid August, that I was lucky enough to find a new
job, thus ending my day-by-day front row seat to the death of the
Lorain Super Kmart.
Still,
even though no longer employed, I remained curious (after all, during
my time there, I'd probably spent more waking hours at Kmart than
anywhere else). On September 17, 2016, 1 day before the store was set
to close, I was in the area ( I had also moved) and decided to drop
in. What I saw would have been mind-blowing to any former employee.
To my surprise, the store was actually quite busy (a special
'thank-you' to everyone who shopped elsewhere until our liquidation
sale, upon which you dropped in like vultures over roadkill). All of
grocery had been crunched into half of aisle 1. I bought the last
2-liter of Diet 7-Up. All of the coolers in dairy and frozen were
gone, replaced by their outlines of filthy floors covered with what
looked like mildew and/or congealed dirt. The old produce and food
court areas were still jammed with unsold fixtures (still grossly
over-priced). The stockroom coolers? Still unsold, they were
literally being cut apart and sold as scrap. All of fashions and
hardlines had been moved up to the front of the store just opposite
checkouts. As for checkouts, none of them worked unless you were
buying grocery merchandise. For everything else, someone accompanying
the cashier had to hand key in the UPC (barcode) of anything else in
order to tell the cashier what to charge (at least I got my 7-Up in a
timely manner).
Thus
was the end of my association with the Lorain Kmart Supercenter and,
one day later, the store itself.
The Rad Air auto repair
shop, located on the building's South side in the old Penske Truck
Rental location, hung on through mid 2017 when I presume the lease
expired. At about the same time, local newspapers reported that
Meijer expressed interest in the former Super Kmart site.
For
that entire time from Rad Air's pull-out until around Thanksgiving,
the store remained fully accessible in that anyone driving by could
pull up into the parking lot, drive by the empty store, get out, and
peer inside. It was around this time that I drove up when I was in
the area. Strangely, the lights were all on, illuminating the vast
expanse of the now-empty building. The fitting rooms had been
disassembled and the entirety of the building was wide-open. Easily
identifiable were all the entrance doors throughout the building, as
labeled below.
Shortly after that visit, things changed.
Meijer inked a deal to buy the site and concrete barriers soon
arrived, blocked off all the entrances, and bulldozers appeared. The
writing was on the wall.
Demolition
started with all glass removal from the entrances and food court.
From there, the bulldozers started knocking down the building in the
Northwest corner (old dairy/frozen area) and started moving
Southeast. The last wall of the store to fall was the South entrance
to the main store leading to the entrance to the enclosed part of the
garden center. By the start of 2018, the building was reduced to a
heap of rubble. Even the light fixtures in the parking lot were
removed.
Throughout
2018, Meijer was busy finalizing designs and getting permits. The
site remained unchanged save for debris being hauled off until early
2019, at which point the parking lot was ripped up and construction
of the Meijer store began. All that remained of Kmart were the
painted over signs along Cooper Foster and Leavitt (OH St. Rt. 58).
By the time mid 2019 arrived, the paint had faded, making it possible
to read the old lettering once again, but not for long. The signs
were removed in October, the beams repainted blue, and new Meijer
signs appeared come November. Work on the site continued into 2020 and the store opened in July, 2020 and appears to be doing quite well.
And
now for the pictures of the closure. Here's a link to a large album of when the store was still operating normally.
NOTE: A few of these pictures became corrupted through copying. I have included them anyway in the interest of historical preservation.
5/2/2016
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