Heads Up! K-Mart On Astor Place Is Now Closed

[launderess]

Just letting anyone who may be thinking in future of heading over to K-Mart in Greenwich Village, NYC that they're now gone.....

Pity really as didn't even know they were having a liquidation sale.

Kmart, An Unlikely Astor Place Icon, Shutters Without Notice

The sprawling Astor Place location was one of the last remaining Kmarts in the country.

gothamist.com

 

[dermacie]

Our Kmart closed two years ago and I miss it so much. It was my closest store, I shopped there for nearly 40 years.

 

[tolivac]

The space where the former Greenville NC K-Mart is now occupied by a Publix grocery.

 

[sudsmaster]

The K-Mart in this town shut down about four years ago. It's now a Living Spaces store. I sort of preferred the K-Mart. I have no need for more furniture.

 

[DADoES]

 
K-Mart here closed more than 40 years ago.  A Rotary project converted the building into the city Civic Center a few years after the closure.

 

[firedome]

our K-Mart in Endicott died...

in the Great Binghamton Flood from Hurricane Irene in 2011 and was never replaced. It was getting seedy from neglect but I miss it.

 

[Ultramatic]

 

 

I went to that Kmart when it first opened many years ago. I guess it's OK if you don't have a car, but in my case it made no sense. I usually went to the Kmart out on Metropolitan Ave. in Queens. But that store closed down about 4 years ago.

 

[kevin313]

My local K-Mart was store #1, in Garden City, Michigan, which opened in 1962 as the first K-Mart. Only a couple of miles from my home, it was a regular stop for much of my life. It closed two years ago, has been demolished, and they are building a fitness center in its place. Luckily, there's a nice Target store right down the street!

 

[ea56]

Our last Kmart in Sonoma Co., in Santa Rosa burned down in wildfire storm in Oct. 2017. So far nothing has been rebuilt there, but I’m certain it won’t be another Kmart. Too bad, I used to shop at all three Kmarts in Sonoma Co. for years. I liked them better than Walmart. But I haven’t shopped in a Kmart for at least 5 years now. The one that used to be 2 1/2 miles from here closed 20 years ago and has since been a Burlington’s, filled with crap no one else wanted, like Tuesday Morning.

Eddie[this post was last edited: 7/15/2021-21:38]

 

[qsd-dan]

The last Kmart near my area went out of business almost 20 years ago and turned into a Trader Joes 14-15 years ago. The last time I went inside there was the early 1990's.

 

[fan-of-fans]

Our Kmart closed at end of 2018. It was a relatively newer one built in the early 90s and was well kept and clean right up to the end.

But to be honest I always thought Kmart's best days were in the 1990s and before, maybe early 2000s at the latest. I don't ever remember buying anything there in my adult years, I preferred Sears. I did go to their closing sale a few times and picked up a few things, most of it was actually maintenance stuff and office supplies that were part of the store itself that they were getting rid of.

I did feel bad for the employees when it closed, especially one of the managers that I went to school with her kids. She was at Kmart as long as I can remember, over 20 years. She's at Goodwill now, I hope they're doing alright.

 

[jamiel]

Vornado says it's going to be a grocer (likely Wegmans')

 

[gizmo]

Kmart Australia

It is odd to read of all the Kmart closures in USA and the decline of Kmart.

In Australia, Kmart is strong as ever. Kmart used to be connected to SS Kresge/Kmart in USA but the connection was severed many years ago.

Kmart was always known as a cheap store, but in recent times they have tried to be better quality than you could expect for the price, and it has worked for them. There is even a huge online presence of people who show off online what they have bought at Kmart, including Facebook pages Kmart Addicts, Kmart Lovers Australia and Kmart Hacks for Normal People.

Anko is one of Kmart Australia's main store brands, and Anko stores in USA are an offshoot of Kmart Australia.

Choice magazine often test Kmart products against big brands, their stuff often comes up well. (sometimes not so well, too.) A $16 Anko frypan performed as well as expensive brands.

The bargain Kmart pans that beat the big brands | CHOICE

Our experts rated a Kmart stainless-steel non-stick frypan and a Kmart Anko saucepan among the top performers in our kitchen lab test. Are there any pitfalls in buying a cheap frying pan?

www.choice.com.au

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/kmart-australia-hack-pages-social-media-influencers-feature-2021-6

 

[fan-of-fans]

It is very interesting how different Australia's Kmart is than the one of the USA.

My understanding is that mostly all the US Kmart sells anymore is a very fragmented line of supplies from some other supplier company. I've heard they often have entire aisles filled with one bulk item, like motor oil, packs of paper towels or coolers, for example, rather than actual departments. Other stuff seems to be overstocks brought in from other retailers to be sold.

When my local one was closing there were clothes of brands other than what Kmart sold, that seemed to be brought in just for the sale.

I would doubt Kmart even has any private labeled merchandise anymore. Long gone are the days of Martha Stewart items or Route 66 clothing and Joe Boxer. I could be wrong though.

If this is the case then to me Kmart is little more than a poorly stocked version of CVS, and rather pointless.

Sorry for the employees, but I refuse to give Eddie Lampert another penny, either way. If I have to have anything specific to Sears I'll buy it from another supplier.

 

[tolivac]

I liked K-Marts electric razor department-they carried blades and most parts for common shavers.So miss this.

 

[sudsomatic]

It's been several years...

 

Since there was a K-Mart in south-central Indiana.

 

When the most local one to me in Bedford went out around 2017, nearly all the surrounding ones in smaller and bigger cities followed within weeks. Bloomington had 2 stores, the one on the south side went out the same time as Bedford did, the one closer to the IU campus held on for a few months longer but finally gave up the ghost.

 

Something interesting about the north side Bloomington store is that for the last few months of it's existence the store itself was nearly bare, they had a skeleton crew working there compared to the big staff you'd usually see, it was like a ghost town. They had blocked off huge sections of the store with shelves as barricades and hanging tarps making them inaccessible so that the size of the shoppable store was about a third of what it was originally.

 

There were no on duty cashiers, all of the checkout lanes were all blocked off with carts and you were directed to go to the service desk. At the service desk you had to ring a buzzer to signal someone to the front if you actually found something in the barren wasteland to purchase.

 

But the service desk setup was really there for internet/app customers, they had basically turned the building into a store locker for online order pickups only. It was pretty much just a hub that goods were shipped to from the suppliers for local pickup as a 'ship to store' option so as to avoid paying ship to home costs .

 

I miss K-Mart from being a kid when it was a part of the Mall in Bedford (which, like so many malls, is also long gone now) and spent the most time there.

 

This post made me nostalgic and reminded me of these past postings of 70's K-Mart in store music, seems appropriate to repost them in honor of this most recent casualty

 

Attention K-Mart Shoppers - Archive of Store Music

Apologies if this has been posted before, I did try a search and didn't find it. A couple of years ago a friend sent me this link to an archive of K-Mart in-store music. This is the background music that was produced to be played in the stores for shoppers. This went on for many years. ...

www.automaticwasher.org

 

Kmart store music and anouncements from 1973.

Listen to the soothing sounds of Kmart with this reel to reel recording of in store music from 1973, announcements included.

www.automaticwasher.org

 

Kmart Christmas music - 1974 ..... 2 hrs worth

www.automaticwasher.org