 |
Today's post highlights Monroe County, MS, retail.
|
I had originally intended for this month's post to be the absolute final entry to the blog's Rite Aid series. Well, maybe not absolute, but final for the foreseeable future, anyway. So far, we've featured a Rite Aid post every four months for three years straight. It's probably a good time to take a break, right?
Well, I didn't anticipate getting additional Rite Aid pictures. And maybe I'll get even more after that, who knows. But for sure, I've got at least one more post in me. I can't say yet whether that will follow along with the existing schedule and go up this December -- I had already planned on ceding that space to our ongoing, similarly large Fred's series -- or wait until next April instead; or maybe it will fall out of pattern altogether. In any case, this is not, in fact, the last we'll be seeing of Rite Aid.
But it is going to be pretty cool.
--------------------------------------------------
I thought we'd start off this post a little unconventionally, by first exploring the "bonus" store instead of the main subject. Our post today takes us down to Aberdeen, MS, located in Monroe County. You'll recall that, this past April, we were in nearby Columbus, exploring a very vintage Rite Aid -- now a Walgreens, and before Rite Aid a Revco, the store still retaining all of its interior décor from the latter. Our travels on that same day also brought us through Aberdeen, via the Hwy 45 Bypass. And lo and behold, we came across another Rite Aid-to-Walgreens conversion.
Before encountering that, though, we passed by a shopping center with a vacant big box store. The store by itself may not have attracted too much attention, but its roadside sign sure did. Take a look at it below, and let me know if you see what I saw.
You can make it out, too, right? That's an old Wal-Mart Discount City sign, plain as day! Remarkably, it continues to survive in Aberdeen, legible even with the sign long since painted over. Very, very cool. I did some further digging on the Aberdeen Wal-Mart, and came back with two quite interesting sources. One of them is the 1977 Wal-Mart annual report, which discusses Aberdeen as being among the 28 new stores it opened that year. This gave Wal-Mart a grand total of seven stores in Mississippi -- four of them new in 1977 -- and 153 stores altogether. I've attached a screenshot of the page discussing the new stores below. Who knows, maybe one of those three images is from the Aberdeen store!
 |
Screenshot from Wal-Mart 1977 annual report. Courtesy Walmart
|
The other source is tailored specifically to the Aberdeen Wal-Mart, and as such is much more interesting. It's a case study, authored by CREATE Common Ground -- a project of the MSU Small Town Center -- that investigates "Downtown vs. Wal-Mart." In most cases, the downtowns of small towns such as Aberdeen were adversely impacted upon the arrival of Wal-Mart; and then when Wal-Mart would leave later on -- for example, in favor of a new Supercenter in a larger city nearby -- the small town would be left without any options, the downtown shops already having been driven out of business years before. This has sometimes been referred to as "the Wal-Mart effect."
 |
A similar Wal-Mart Discount City sign to the one in Aberdeen, as seen at a store under construction in 1988. Courtesy Pleasant Family Shopping
|
Aberdeen, however, proved different. In the case study, the author suggests that in this instance, the opposite may have been true -- indeed, that the strength of downtown drove out Wal-Mart. It's an interesting read, and a short one at that, so I strongly encourage all of you to take a look at it. I've attached it as a PDF file below. Even today, Aberdeen's downtown continues to remain strong, if this April 2020 article is any indication.
Below, you can see the vacant Wal-Mart building itself. According to that case study, another discount store occupied the space after Wal-Mart left, and perhaps a string of other retailers have operated in the building, too; I really can't say for certain how many other tenants the building has had, or how long any of them lasted. All I know for sure is that the store opened as Wal-Mart in 1977, and closed 20 years later on January 20th, 1997, as stated in the case study. Per Google Street View, it has been vacant since at least 2008, but it's likely that it had already been empty for years prior.
--------------------------------------------------
At 41,000 square feet, the abandoned former Wal-Mart Discount City is probably an eyesore, albeit a long-familiar one, to Aberdeen residents. With Rite Aid's departure from Mississippi in 2018, Aberdeen was almost faced with another long-term vacancy. Thankfully, though, this Rite Aid was one of the locations picked up by Walgreens, who did not already have a store in town. Thus, for the remainder of this post we'll be taking a quick look at the converted Aberdeen Walgreens.
With the image above, immediately you can see why I was excited to go back and stop in this store, after first driving past it. It's still just your typical 90s diamond-window Rite Aid building, but unlike most of those that converted to Walgreens, here Walgreens did nothing to alter the exterior besides removing Rite Aid's signage and adding their own -- not even a drop of paint was added. Indeed, the building remains Rite Aid tan, complete with Rite Aid blue windows. Very low-budget, and also a bit of an unfortunate representation of the corporate assessment of degree of effort required based on town size; but for retail fans -- a cool find!
Here you can see the exterior in somewhat closer detail. Again, all Walgreens has done is remove the big blue banner-type things Rite Aid used for their signage, and install their own "Walgreens Pharmacy" signage. It's possible that the field in which they've installed their signage had to be painted upon removal of the banners, but if so, then Walgreens painted it to match the existing color of the rest of the building.
Note also that even the "Drive-Thru Pharmacy" sign near the corner of the building remains totally unchanged from the Rite Aid days. Walgreens didn't even spring for a new signface for it.
With the exterior so thoroughly unaltered, I was intrigued to see just how much Walgreens had done on the inside as well. In this first image of the interior, we find the answer -- not much! Walgreens did remove Rite Aid's old RA1 department signage in favor of putting up their own décor, and installed new aisle markers as well (affixed to the shelves, rather than hanging from the ceiling); but other than that, this is still wholly recognizable as a 1990s Rite Aid.
As we'll see in that aforementioned next Rite Aid post, the level of changes made has varied in Rite Aid's Mississippi conversions, but this Aberdeen store is comparably on the lower end of the scale. (Of course, stores like that vintage one in Columbus are at the very baseline!)
I think a few departments may have been shuffled around a little -- namely, around the greeting cards area -- but for the most part, Walgreens left Rite Aid's store layout intact, too. Here we can see cosmetics still occupying the space adjacent to the entrance of the store. And yes, that's an old Rite Aid cart repurposed for use by Walgreens that you see on the left of the frame, too.
Rite Aid's former FoodMart has been rechristened "food + drinks" by Walgreens, but it continues to retain its signature Rite Aid house-like refrigerator/freezer built-in. Note that Walgreens didn't even bother to change the color of the "roof" away from Rite Aid's shade of blue. It's a lot to ask for them to remove and replace that entire unit (i.e. $$$), but I have at least seen the roof be painted a different color in other Rite Aid-to-Walgreens conversions. Indeed, Walgreens really did do only the bare minimum with this store.
The pharmacy counter and adjoining health and wellness aisles remain in the same spots as they were in the Rite Aid days. I didn't get much closer since I was the only customer in the store at the time, and I didn't want to attract the attention of the pharmacist(s) on duty. I was in here alone, and for less than five minutes altogether. I tried to move quickly.
Probably about halfway through, another customer arrived -- a cop. I actually didn't even think about it that way, but my parents out in the parking lot thought I would have freaked out! I think cops have more important things to be doing than going after retail photographers, though :P
Here's a look over toward the store's... right-side wall, I think this is? I always get so turned around in these 90s Rite Aid buildings. In any case, over that way we can see both the cards + gift wrap and photo + tech departments, clad in their new Walgreens signage.
I'm not sure how much in the way of new fixtures Walgreens brought in during the conversion (I would imagine, though, that it's a very small number), but one thing that stood out to me is that Rite Aid's typical greeting card aisles with the overhead pink light fixtures were missing.
Here's a close-up shot of the new Walgreens food + drinks signage. On the shelving in the foreground, we can also see Walgreens's new aisle markers, and gooseneck category markers.
What's your opinion of this Walgreens décor package? I actually quite like it. It's simple yet powerful, in that the balance of color and white space really packs a visual punch. The imagery used is neat as well, and best of all for Walgreens, this package has proven very versatile for implementation in all of the Rite Aids it has been converting over the past several years.
Here's a shot down the major central actionway of the store back towards the front entrance, followed by a close-up view of the floor at the actionway intersection. Very clearly, the floor has been left behind from Rite Aid, and still dons that chain's pastel blue color scheme in the tiles. We also see (in the top image) that, like the exterior, Walgreens did not paint the interior walls either; the blue outlines running along all the diamond windows are all still present.
Speaking of "present" -- here we are now in the cards + gift wrap section, haha! As I said earlier, I think this area of the salesfloor experienced the most change with the Walgreens conversion; for example, the wall you see here would previously have been home to something other than toys and gift bags, I think, and for that matter I'm not sure that the food department would have extended over into this area before, either (you can see candy on the shelves in the foreground). I wonder if Walgreens expanded the food selection, and if so, if that department is a high-performer for them (either at this store specifically, or for the company in general).
I also find it interesting to note how, unlike all the other department signs, this one does not have a solid color piece separating the department name from the adjacent image.
I would've liked to have photographed the new Walgreens photo + tech department, which occupies the former Rite Aid photo processing area, but all the employees that were in the store at the time of my visit were congregated over in that space. On the plus side, they didn't seem to be paying attention to me, but I also didn't want to press my luck by trying to get a photo of that area. So, I settled for this final interior pic of the checkouts, instead. Not that it's not a cool scene in its own right -- it's always fun to see that new Walgreens signage above juxtaposed with the signature pink and blue, zig-zag Rite Aid register counters below!
Back outside, here's one last look at the store's exterior. I'm curious to hear what y'all think about this conversion in the comments below this post. While I actually quite enjoyed seeing how little effort Walgreens put into inhabiting this store, as I said earlier, it is at the same time a rather sad thing, too, when you think about it, assuming that the fact that the store is in Aberdeen played a role in the decisions that Walgreens made. But then again, such is retail, I suppose. It's not like this is a new concept or anything...
I didn't even think about taking the time to explore the area around the front doors a little closer. If I had, I wonder if I would've found a stray Rite Aid logo or two hanging around...
I'll conclude this post with a look at the streetside Walgreens sign, which, as with the store itself, remains very much in a Rite Aid state of mind. All Walgreens did here was swap out the Rite Aid signface for one of their own, with their speech bubble "W" icon; not even the old "1-Hr. Photo" snipe beneath was replaced. The whole sign itself is looking rather rough, honestly. But again, if nothing else, it's a plainly obvious reminder that this place used to be a Rite Aid -- as if everything else we saw hasn't been enough!
By the way, if you've noticed that the images in this post are slightly different than normal, that's because they were taken with my mom's cell phone camera as opposed to my own. This was my last stop on our Columbus road trip day, and by this time, my phone battery had run out of juice. We visited lots of cool places, including the aforementioned Columbus Rite Aid-turned-Walgreens that was featured on the blog in April; the closing Columbus Kmart, which I just wrapped up posting
over on flickr; and a couple of other fun destinations in Columbus, which I'll be sharing both on flickr and here on the blog, as the time comes. Please stay tuned for that content and more!
I also apologize if the formatting of this post is messed up in any way; this is my first time using the "new" Blogger -- the old "legacy" version has been retired -- and it's taking some time to adjust and relearn where everything is. Hopefully I'll get a better hang of it by the next post, a Fred's post, which with any luck will be uploading next month. Until then, and as always -- have fun exploring the retail world wherever you are!
Retail Retell
Although we still have some old Discount City-era Wal-Mart buildings still standing in the Houston area, I think it has been a long time since I've seen one of those old Wal-Mart Discount City street signs. Seeing those pictures did bring up some old memories!
ReplyDeleteThat dilapidated ex-Wal-Mart building reminds me of the former Wal-Mart/Bud's in Dickinson, TX. I suppose you can call Dickinson a suburb of Houston. It's in between Galveston and SE Houston. A furniture store called Sussan moved into the old Wal-Mart, but they themselves moved out/closed and the building was abandoned for a number of years. I can't remember if it was right before or right after Hurricane Harvey in 2017, but the building was finally razed around the time of the hurricane. I'm guessing it was after the hurricane. Since Dickinson was hit hard by flooding from that hurricane, the parking lot of the old Wal-Mart was used as a dropping off point for people to bring their old electronics, appliances, and construction waste as people were clearing out all the flood damaged stuff. Most of the other old Wal-Marts in the Houston area have been redeveloped and have mostly avoided blight, but sometimes the redevelopments take some time to happen.
OTOH, we've had some ex-Kmarts which reached blight status and then some. A couple of these have been torn down in recent years. One was the Spring Branch Kmart. That was an original 1962 Kmart and was one of the first 15 or so locations in the history of the chain. That was the Kmart my family shopped at until other locations closer in were built in the 1970s. An odd part about that location was that it was built on an old family farm that had the family's private cemetery in it. The family sold the land to developers, but they wanted to keep the cemetery obviously so the shopping center was built around the cemetery. The actual cemetery itself was fenced off. Here's an old photo of the situation, but it still remains: https://s.hdnux.com/photos/67/74/73/14667498/3/920x920.jpg
Also, here's an awesome old photo of the Spring Branch Kmart back in the early 1970s I guess. It also shows the Jack in the Box there and the Kmart Foods: https://imgur.com/VLZoqcu
If you want a real laugh, check out the photos of this dilapidated ex-Kmart in Houston that was on the North Freeway. The building was eventually torn down and replaced with a community college in the last few years. These might be some of the best retail photos from Houston on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/secretsquirrel5468/sets/72157623806836159/with/4474004385/
As for the main topic of the post, the Ritegreens, lol. I'm not too familiar with Rite Aid since we don't have them here. I've seen many photos of their locations on Flickr, but those are mostly vintage locations (well, more vintage than this one at least). I must say that I like this store. The diamond windows are pretty neat and I like that roofing overhang above the milk/juice coolers. The design somewhat reminds me of 1990s Eckerd locations which kind of split the store in half with one side being almost all pharmacy items and the other half being convenience store stuff.
Now, obviously, there are parts of this store which Walgreens should have spent some money repairing like the street sign. Also, it's strange seeing so much blue at a Walgreens. The blue also reminds me of Eckerd though so I don't have a problem with it.
So, yeah, I'd be quite pleased if my local Walgreens looked like this Ritegreens. Maybe people more used to Rite Aid would feel differently though.
I suppose between these photos and AFB's Zayre Lots photos he posted this morning, today has been the colored floor tiles day, lol. Do you remember the Color Tile chain of flooring stores that were around the US? They had very distinctive signage. We had a store near here...in the McDuff shopping center. Where else? Lol. It was right by a Radio Shack as well. https://www.flickr.com/photos/kinorama/4895171148/
Glad to bring up some memories for you! Yes, there seem to be a lot of dilapidated old Wal-Mart and Kmart buildings all over, especially in the south. That one you mention with the cemetery in the parking lot certainly is an interesting story!
DeleteI'm really not all that familiar with Rite Aid myself, as I had never been to a majority of the locations I've covered prior to their exit from the Mid-South (and in a lot of these instances, you're seeing that my visits are in fact after Walgreens has taken over the stores and converted them). I'm surprised that the flickr images you've seen have been of older decor packages, though. I haven't seen too much preceding this 1990s pastel package. It's cool to hear that you like the store design. You might like the full decor that went with it, too. It can be seen in most of my other Rite Aid posts (but not all).
A lot of people in the retail community, I've found, much prefer Rite Aid, and despise Walgreens. Frankly I'm the opposite, but I guess it depends on who you've done business with for your whole life. Walgreens is the only chain pharmacy we have in town, so...
Unfortunately, I've never heard of Color Tile. But it's not surprising in the least to hear that they had a location in that McDuff shopping center, haha!
When I think of Rite Aid photos on Flickr and other sites, I often think of the photos like the ones towards the top of the Flickr channel I'll link below. Granted, those photos were posted so long ago that they vintage photos of vintage stores, lol. That Flickr user has some interesting old photos of Smith's Marketplace as well which I'm sure you'll find interesting. Anyway, some of those Rite Aids weren't originally Rite Aids, but it seems like Rite Aid had a large hodgepodge of stores which started out as something else. Anyway, here is the link to that Flickr user: https://www.flickr.com/photos/88327656@N00/
DeleteJe on the Louisiana & Texas Retail Blog has also posted some Rite Aids which were former K&B stores. I don't know much about K&B, but Je had a very high opinion of them. Here is one such post: https://southernretail.blogspot.com/2019/03/final-days-of-rite-aid-former-k-lake.html
I'm surprised to hear that Walgreens is a rather despised brand in the retail community. Is this because they and CVS are the survivors and have replaced/eliminated a lot of smaller former rivals like Eckerd and K&B? Maybe it's because Walgreens stores tend to be rather modern looking and cookie cutter (though not the last couple that you've posted here to the blog!)?
Eckerd was a very good drugstore chain. I liked them better than Walgreens, but I like Walgreens more than CVS in more modern times. Both can be pretty lousy pharmacies though as far as customer service goes. Je used to be a manager/asst. manager of Walgreens stores some years ago and had some insights into why their pharmacies have such poor customer service.
Sometimes those in the retail community have a somewhat distorted view about various retailers. It's probably not a stretch to say that Kmart is/was the official discount store of the retail community (aside from the Ames/Zayre/Caldor fans from the NE!), but Kmart has been a retailer stuck in malaise for almost 30 years now and I suspect the admiration for them is more for their history, retroness, lack of upkeep, and general backwardness more than excellence as a retailing operation (saying Kmart and excellence as retailing operation in the same sentence in a modern context is a real laugher!). Don't get me wrong, I was a big Kmart fan and loyalist even in their last few years here in Houston which ended in 2002-3, but even as a fan I could tell you that Kmart offered a very frustrating shopping experience with higher prices, poor inventory control, and a lack of customer service in many different ways. We may love telling stories about Kmarts, but I think just about everyone who has a story to tell about Kmart from the last 30 years has a story to tell about why they're on the verge of extinction. That story you told on Flickr about the store directory is just one of those sad tales!
AFB's point below about the sale of alcohol, snack food, and candy at Walgreen's is not at all surprising to me, but still rather bizarre given that we generally think of Walgreen's being a place to go to in order to get healthy, lol.
I'm not sure if you've ever been to Canada, but they have some interesting pharmacy stores up there. I quite liked Shoppers Drug Mart. Lowlaw, the Kroger of Canada, owns them now so I don't know if they've changed much because of that. London Drugs is a big chain in western Canada. Instead of combining pharmacies with cosmetics and junk food like Walgreens/CVS, London Drugs combines pharmacies with cosmetics and electronics. The electronics they sell aren't junky electronics either (Je and I refer to junk electronics as being Tozai grade since Tozai was a store brand Walgreen's used on really poor quality electronics in the 1980s-1990s). Well, they may sell some junk, but they sell good stuff as well. Here are some Flickr photos I found of them:
https://flic.kr/p/peFH2F
https://flic.kr/p/4zdHA1
https://flic.kr/p/2iFJZsW
https://flic.kr/p/234kM6u
Wow, those are some Rite Aid looks that I've never seen! Again, I'm not all that familiar with them, but I thought I had a good handle on their decor lineage. Clearly, there are some surprises, though. Those Smith's photos are cool as well.
DeleteYeah, I'm not versed in K&B either, but I know they were here in Memphis prior to Rite Aid buying them out. I think they were well-liked. As for the dislike for Walgreens, yes, I believe it's a combination of everything you mention there.
That's interesting that Je has history with Walgreens. And yes, I would agree with you that Kmart was -- and to some extent still is -- the official discount store of the retail community. But I also agree that they have had more than their fair share of problems, and I don't think I've been shy about sharing my opinion that the brand needs to be put out of its misery. I would feel bad for the employees were all the stores to suddenly close in one fell swoop, but I also have to imagine that, at least in some way, that would actually come as a relief, since I'm sure all Sears and Kmart employees have been quite nervous about their job security over the past five to ten years, if not longer. Losing your job sucks, but so does uncertainty; there's really not a winning situation to it, I bet. But I digress.
Ha, that's ironic indeed! And no, I've never been to Canada. Those stores sound interesting though.
Wow, I just discovered a very odd situation that is happening at one of the Walgreens closest to me here in Houston. Since the topic of this post is odd Walgreens reuses, I think this will fit because it is a very odd reuse in an already odd building.
DeleteAround 2004, Eckerd decided to build a brand new location here at an intersection which contains a Walmart Supercenter and an Albertsons-turned-Kroger. In the years since, a Target and Home Depot have opened up at the intersection as well. There was also a then-new Walgreens right across the intersection from where this Eckerd was being built.
During the middle of the Eckerd construction, Eckerd sold their Texas locations to CVS. CVS already had a relatively new location right down the street so they never moved into this Eckerd which was being built. The building was completed and it had everything which looked like an Eckerd, but nobody moved into it for a few years. Eventually, a gym opened up in the building and remained there for a number of years. The gym closed a couple of years ago though.
Before the pandemic started, I noticed that the building was being remodeled. After the pandemic started, I didn't drive by that area until today. What greeted me when I drove by it? A brand new Walgreens!
I could not believe it. Why would Walgreens open a location right across the intersection from an existing store that was only about 16-18 years old and had everything that Walgreens puts in their modern locations? It just didn't make sense.
I drove back to the area to check this situation out. The old Walgreens had indeed closed. Furthermore, the old Eckerd which was never an Eckerd was subdivded into three storefronts with Walgreens taking one of them. Thus, as you can guess, the Walgreens is very small. I didn't go in it, but it appeared that the store was nothing more than a pharmacy and that's it. It did reuse the drive-thru part of the Eckerd that was never an Eckerd though. A look at the Walgreens website shows that location as a pharmacy, but not a store. It should be noted that the other two storefronts in the Eckerd-turned-shopping center were still vacant.
I also noticed that the Kroger gas station across the street from the old Walgreens had closed and it looked like it was getting ready to be demolished. There is road construction in the area and so that makes me wonder if maybe the local government purchased the land that the old Walgreens and Kroger gas station were on for construction purposes. I suppose I'll find out here soon. What's really odd is that Kroger just put up a new sign at the gas station a few months ago shortly after they released their new logo.
So, yeah, there are a lot of odd things about this situation. The building that was built in ~2004 to be a pharmacy has finally partially turned into one, but it wasn't for Eckerd or for CVS. Also, it's strange that Walgreens decided to replace their old store with a small-format pharmacy-only store. Is this a recent trend with Walgreens? It seems that they could have taken over the whole Eckerd that was never an Eckerd if they wanted a full-line store.
On the topic of Walgreens and gas stations, another local Walgreens which recently closed was turned into a gas station. That's an odd conversion. I don't have a photo of the finished product, but here's a construction photo from Google Street View of the Walgreens being transformed into a gas station: https://goo.gl/maps/aRbSajevxZoaN1hP6
Hopefully you didn't find this Walgreens adventure to be too boring, lol.
Yeah, that is a very interesting situation! It's probably not entirely unheard of for a store to relocate to a newer building close by, but I agree, it is somewhat odd that Walgreens would downsize to a pharmacy-only store there. Perhaps the existing store wasn't performing very well, or had a theft problem or something. Or maybe they just wanted to test this new small format in that particular location for some reason. Who knows, maybe that's the future, or at least part of the future, for Walgreens. Will be interesting to monitor.
DeleteYour theory that the government purchased their existing land is certainly a good reason for them to have relocated, but that still doesn't explain why they opted for the smaller format. And ha, that Walgreens-to-gas-station conversion is definitely a new one for me!
I thought you might like to see a photo of the situation. I did some digging and I did find a brochure online from the developer of the shopping center that houses the new small format Walgreens. The photo of the new Walgreens is right on page 1 of the brochure. I think you'll be surprised just how little of this former Eckerd that was never an Eckerd that this new Walgreens takes up. You may also be surprised at how little the space actually looks like a Walgreens, but I can confirm that the building actually looks like that.
DeleteThe lease plan on page 4 of the document shows that the Walgreens takes up half of the space of the old Eckerd that was never an Eckerd, but I'm not so sure if that's actually accurate. To my eyes, it looks like it only takes up maybe a third of the building, but maybe the Walgreens space is L-shaped or something. It's hard to tell from looking at it from the outside. I also misspoke in the previous post about the Eckerd being divided into three spaces including the Walgreens. It looks like it was divided into four spaces. Also, on page 4, you can make out where the old Walgreens was.
Here's the link to that brochure: https://resolutre.com/download-flyer/0681U00000Cp8XyQAJ/FM_1960_Eldridge_Center.pdf
And here is a link which has a photo slideshow showing the Eckerd that was never an Eckerd right before it the building was remodeled. This link indicates that the building was a former CVS, but that's not true. CVS did own the building (or at least a lease on it), but I'm almost positive that neither Eckerd or CVS actually operated out of this building. Link: https://www.loopnet.com/Listing/12620-W-FM-1960-Houston-TX/17670245/
I almost wonder if this new Walgreens might be a temporary setup, but I don't see any indication that it is temporary. Also, they quite easily could have opened a full-sized location in several spots in that area quite quickly.
I gave some thought to the new Walgreens situation and also the situation at the other former Walgreens in the area which was turned into a gas station. I don't want to take too much out of two locations, but it's interesting that you have a gas station opening an extra large C-store which is the size of a Walgreens and there is a Walgreens which downsized and eliminated their C-store section. Could we see a situation where gas stations and other retailers like Family Dollar/Dollar General take C-store market share from the pharmacies and the pharmacies stick to just operating pharmacies?
It's probably way, way too early to assume that, but it is something interesting to chew on.
I also can't recall the last time a new Walgreens opened in a shopping center, but perhaps I shouldn't count this small format store as a regular Walgreens.
Well, anyway, after seeing the photo of that new Walgreens, hopefully you can understand why I was shocked when I saw it in person!
Thanks for the links! That barely even looks like a permanent Walgreens sign on the building in that picture. Wild. Interesting to see the Eckerd building pre-subdivision, too.
DeleteYeah, it's definitely interesting that they chose to go with the smaller-format location here. Surely they have their reason(s) why, but it doesn't seem like we'll be able to learn what those are.
You make an interesting point about the C-store stuff. Worth keeping an eye on that situation, but since we had already established Walgreens does good food sales, I can't imagine they'd be stepping away from that entirely. Of course, stranger things have happened.
Here's an update on Walgreens downsizing their stores in Houston. I was driving in the area near where the mini-Walgreens in the Eckerd that was never actually an Eckerd is earlier today. There's another 2000s-era Walgreens there.
DeleteWell, it seems that they are just finishing up some construction at that Walgreens. It seems that the building has been sub-divided. Part of the store remains as a Walgreens (almost in an L-shape it seemed), but part of the building is now an independent (or so it seems) doctor's office. It really didn't look like anything that was affiliated with Walgreens.
I'm not sure what's going on. This is now two Walgreens in the area which have been downsized. One was downsized in the same building as it was before and the other downsized to a new building. I'm really wondering now if all/most of the Walgreens in this area, or even just a number of them, will be downsized one way or another. If that does happen, I really don't know if it's just a Houston thing or if it's something we'll see nationally. It's really very odd.
Wow, that is definitely strange. Like you, I have to wonder what exactly is going on with these downsizings. That's quite odd indeed. At least shrinking a pharmacy in order to fit in a doctor's office seems to make slightly more sense than shrinking just for the heck of it, but of course, for all we know it could just be a coincidence that a doctor's office has leased that space. This will certainly be something to keep an eye on. Thank you for the update!
DeleteFirst of all, the old Wal-Mart sign is really cool! The fact that survived in-tact like that for 23 years is quite amazing, especially if a number of tenants have cycled through that building over the years. Strangely enough, the modern brown and blue paint scheme of the old Aberdeen Wal-Mart looks more like that store closed in the last few years, rather than in 1997. It's interesting that unlike many other cases, the people of Aberdeen chose to support downtown over the new Walmart, and that even today Aberdeen's downtown is doing well.
ReplyDeleteBut in relation to the main subject of this post, Walgreens certainly isn't fooling anyone with that conversion! I always like a good retail conversion, and there's certainly plenty from that building's past life to find in there. I like the new Walgreens look, and with the company's increased use of the light blue color scheme in modern stores, all the shades of blue left from Rite Aid's decor go well with Walgreens' decor. I thought the majority of the Rite Aid conversions Walgreens were more "budget minded", so that's interesting to hear some remodels were a bit more extensive. As for Walgreens when it comes to food sales, it is one of their stronger areas, specifically in three categories: alcohol, snack foods, and candy (and they do a good amount of sales with the refrigerated foods as well). Appearing to be one of the only pharmacy options in town from a quick scan over Google Maps, I'm sure that also helps bring business to this place as a "one stop shop" for the people in town.
Interestingly, back when it appeared Rite Aid would be completely going away, I made the attempt to photograph a few while in PA that summer. At one of the ones I photographed, like you, I was the only shopper in the place at the time - the only other person in the store being the (very chatty) cashier. I tried to make my pictures quick as it felt awkward being the only shopper in the place (and the very bored cashier kept trying to make conversation with me every time I appeared near the front, which wasn't helping the picture taking venture any!) But as long as you aren't trying to take pictures outside of an abandoned supermarket at 5:00 in the morning, the cops tend to leave most retail photographers alone, which is nice :)
Also, nothing seems too wonky about the formatting (and I didn't even know you could embed a PDF in Blogger either!). I just put together my first few posts with new Blogger over the weekend, and the experience hasn't been horrible.
Thanks, I agree! It is amazing for sure. I looked at street view, and while Google of course hasn't been through Aberdeen very much, in the 2013 image (I think it is), part of the "Mart" portion looks to be on its last legs, falling out of the sign. It's remarkable that it got pushed back into place instead of falling out! And good point about the paint scheme too, I hadn't even thought of that. I was really surprised about the success of downtown Aberdeen -- good for them!
DeleteHa, no, they sure aren't fooling anyone, are they! Fair point about the light blue color (something else I hadn't thought of); while I'd be surprised if that played a role in their decision not to do any painting, it's nice to use it as a justification in our heads, lol :P As for the other remodels, I'm probably getting ahead of myself here, but that next post will cover all of the other Mississippi Rite Aid-to-Walgreens conversions. (One full in-person stour, the rest from online images) More work seemed to be done to a lot of the others, but then again, most of those stores already had Wellness (which really surprised me; I guess Rite Aid cared more about the rest of the state than they did DeSoto County!). So in those stores, it was probably easier to slap on a coat of paint and achieve an entirely different feel; these RA1 stores would've needed more work. In short, those other conversions were probably fairly cheap as well, but managed to look like Walgreens put in more effort.
Thanks for the info on Walgreens's food sales! I had no idea. I would've assumed people would be turned off by their higher prices on those items, but like you said, when there are so few options, I suppose it's probably more of a popular destination. Same logic with Dollar General, where the unit prices are much higher on food items than at Walmart, but DG is often a lot closer to rural folks than WM is.
That is an interesting story about the PA Rite Aid you went to! The cashiers here were very chatty as well; it's just that they were all chatting with each other instead of with me XD I think I may have beaten even this quick in-and-out trip with the visit to that other upcoming MS Rite Aid; we arrived right about 6, and saw the sign on the door said closing at 6, but the doors opened, so we rushed in and quickly tried to find something to purchase and leave. We were the only ones inside then, as well. Finally, when checking out, the cashier informed us that it was only the pharmacy that closed at 6, and not the store itself -- whoops! (Oh, and trust me, you won't find me outside of *anywhere* at 5:00 in the morning, lol :P )
Ah, thanks for the confirmation there! The pictures thing has been annoying me; I know you said you figured out an easier way to get them to the size you want, but I could only get them to medium by using that separate menu you mentioned to me. They used to default to medium, but last night they were uploading at full-size. I hope they'll get back to defaulting to medium, I don't want to have to manually change each and every one of them for every post. I did see where you could hit a plus or minus button without having to access that separate menu, but I'm a little anal and want them exactly on Blogger's medium setting, and those buttons don't fit the same dimensions -- what gives?!
DeleteI also had trouble with the spacing; if you look closely at the top of the post, you'll see that there actually aren't blank lines of text between the paragraphs. Somehow Blogger started adding space beneath each paragraph, like Word does in, say, 1.25 spacing. I prefer 1.0 spacing with a true manually-inserted blank line between each paragraph, so that the images don't appear too close to the text. Once I inserted all of the Rite Aid images as a batch at the end, the spacing went back to normal. I'll have to play around and see if that's a Chrome thing, or a new Blogger thing. Hopefully it's an easy fix, or at least something Blogger will fix in the future if it's on their end.
Anyway, that's probably TMI, and overly nitpicky to boot, so I'll stop there :P But as a final note, concerning the PDFs -- yeah, I didn't know that either, haha! I found a handy question-and-answer page from a Google search that told me how to do that :) I had to upload the file to my Google Drive, then set the share settings to public, and finally embed it from there. Here is the link if you're interested: https://support.google.com/blogger/forum/AAAAY7oIW-w88X9hd93bYw?hl=en
Wow, this is really cool! I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Walgreens was very cheap with their Rite Aid conversions since they're cheap with their own stores, but this is still a surprise -- but a nice surprise, of course! Even Rite Aid's cheap remodels of these stores changed more than this one did...
ReplyDeleteThanks, I agree! I enjoyed this store, in spite of the cheap conversion (or maybe because of it, even...)
DeleteAt least the store got Walgreens decor. Last I knew one of my local Walgreens (a 90s location taken over by Walgreens years before this buyout happened) was still rocking Rite Aid decor. Not that I'm complaining or anything.
ReplyDeleteWow, that's very interesting that Walgreens would've kept Rite Aid's decor intact, especially at a store they took over years prior! Not what I would have expected from them, although I suppose this package (as I mentioned) does indeed lend itself better to quick and easy implementation more than any of their past packages did...
DeleteI only got through the prologue about Walmart and will come back to read the remainder later today, but the "town rumor" about Wally World's departure from Aberdeen centered on rampant shoplifting. However, the dual factors of 1) a strong downtown and 2) a new super center in Amory just a few miles away clearly led to the decision to sacrifice this market.
ReplyDeleteThe store was later a Wall's Bargain Center, but I cannot recall for how long or what other tenants may have occupied the space.
There is a similar era store sitting vacant in Winona. Walmart pulled out of that market at the end of 2018. Regrettably, you know the story with Fred's, leaving Winona, a town of about 5,000, without a major discounter. It is home to one of the most disheveled Dollar Generals I have ever walked into -- and that truly says something.
There is an "original" Walmart Discount City still in Houston, MS, which I'm sure you know about. It is increasingly rare to see these small stores still going.
More great stuff! Look forward to reading more.
Interesting, thanks for all the info on the Aberdeen store! Great to have some firsthand accounts of the factors behind the closure as well as the later occupant. I used to love Walls as a really little kid, but I haven't been to one in the longest time.
DeleteYep, I remember reading about the Winona store's closure. Very sad for them, especially with the blow from the Fred's closure as well, like you mention. That's got to be one crazy Dollar General.
I'd heard of the Houston location, but never took the time to really look into it before seeing your comment earlier this afternoon. Definitely looks like a nice, classic Walmart! Hopefully it will continue to last a good long time there.
Thanks, always glad to hear from you!
I just caught up reading the entire post. I actually think this store looks very nice even though Walgreens has left it virtually untouched. It's entirely 90s, but I think the outer facade and interior design has held up well.
DeleteI love these "visual time anomalies" where one chain or independent owner takes over for another. How I'd love to see an operating supermarket that maintains a Kroger greenhouse/Bauhaus look from the 80s.
Fair enough, it does indeed look pretty nice still. The exterior looks especially better now that Walgreens has removed Rite Aid's awning piece.
DeleteI agree! These are always my favorite, especially when original traits are left highly or totally unaltered. Concerning finding an intact Bauhaus Kroger interior, you and me both! If you ever find yourself in Dayton, OH, for some reason, there's one up there waiting for you (and it's still a Kroger, to boot!). I'm slowly plotting out my fantasy trip up that way (plenty of other fun retail destinations involved too), but we'll see if that actually ever winds up happening...
I believe that since were so many stores getting absorbed, they seemed to do as little to them as possible. Exterior paint jobs vary from store to store, but otherwise it's nothing more than IT updates and new signage. Some Customer World-era Rite Aid stores still bear the signage even as Walgreens, so it might not be as surprising to see stores still bearing their Rite Aid decor. You also won't see new carts or renovated restrooms.
ReplyDeleteYes, doesn't seem like a whole lot of work was done. It's a big undertaking though, so I'm sure we'll see more work in the future, over time.
Delete