What happened to all the Kmart stores in Greater Cleveland after they closed?

MEDINA, Ohio – When the nation’s first Super Kmart opened in 1991 on Medina’s North Court Street, it was amid a losing battle with its fiercest competitor, Walmart. By 2012, it closed. And it’s been vacant since.

The Medina store is one of about 40 former Kmart stores across Greater Cleveland. At its peak in 1993 the discount-store chain was a go-to for many shoppers and had about 2,300 locations. Today there are 12 across the U.S. and none in Ohio.

Many have become something new, but a handful of the former retailer’s buildings still haunt shopping plazas and neighborhoods.

In some places, like the Brookpark Road store in Brooklyn or the Broadview Road store in Seven Hills, old Kmarts have been demolished for places like Menards or Meijer.

Other vacancies end with a new life. At the intersection of Lorain Avenue and West 150th in Cleveland, a former Kmart site is becoming several new businesses.

In Medina, Middleburg Heights, Bainbridge Township and Garfield Heights, former stores sit unused.

“I think it can feel really demoralizing for a community,” said Rosemary Mudry, executive director of West Park Kamm’s Neighborhood Development.

A lot of people take pride in how their community’s commercial district loos, she said. Even when stores and homes nearby are flourishing, former big box stores make for large eyesores.

Vacant Kmart’s highlight a particular challenge when it comes to development. When big box store retailers leave or go out of business, they leave a big hole that was specially made for them — and hard to fill.

* Related: See the location of each former Kmart in Greater Cleveland; when they opened; when they clos (photo gallery)

An official list of former Kmarts isn’t publicly available, but Ben Schultz, a 23-year-old studying for a master’s in history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, has the closest thing.

After sifting through newspaper archives, government databases and old corporate documents on microfilm, he had enough information to write a manuscript on the topic. He also compiled a list of over 3,100 locations that have opened and closed since the brand’s inception.

According to his list, Cuyahoga County and the counties bordering it — Summit, Portage, Lake, Geauga, Lorain and Medina — had 40 Kmart stores, including a handful that were demolished to build larger versions close by.

Kmart stores first opened in 1962, originally an offshoot of the S.S. Krege five-and-dime stores. The company would become dominant by the 1980s across the nation, Schultz said, basically beating out all competition.

Typical Kmarts were much smaller than typical Walmarts, Schultz said. And Kmart was never able to catch up with its own superstores. It would first file bankruptcy in 2002, and close stores about as quickly as it once opened them

Today, the Medina Kmart remains the challenge of the North Court Street corridor, said Kimberly Marshall, economic development director for the city of Medina. She said city officials are actively work get to get the site redeveloped.

She said the store has also become an “attractive nuisance,” Marshall said. The city has been working to enforce code violations, and the building has recently fallen into disrepair, she said. People have dumped things in the parking lot or broken into the store.

But economic development around the Kmart has gone well. ODOT finished a $30 million road widening project in the area in 2018, and new businesses have opened nearby since then, Marshall said.

An Aldi, a tire center and a Chick-Fil-A have all recently come to that area, she said. Marshall said the city always send people interested in the Kmart to the owners.

Benderson Development, which owns the property, has kept things “close to the vest” she said. The company could not be reached for comment.

In Middleburg Heights, a former Kmart at the corner of Bagley and Engle roads hasn’t found a suitor after closing in early 2019. The city’s economic development director, Charles Bichara, said he and the city’s mayor have taken CEOs, regional real estate people and companies’ representatives on tours to see the property.

Premier Development partners recently bought

the store. The developer did not respond to cleveland.com requests for comment. Bichara said he could not talk about any potential developments at the location.

“Our understanding is those announcements will be

made shortly,” he said.

Bichara said the city has been successful over time. But the landscape of retail and office space has changed constantly. The city also has a vacant former Sears on West 130th, which includes a 186,000-square-foot store, about 170,000 square foot basement with office space and a large former tire center.

New businesses are coming to the parking lots near the Kmart, but not the building itself.

The Bainbridge Kmart closed in 2012 and later became an outdoor supply store, but that too has closed. The Garfield Heights store on Rockside Road closed in 2017, and was bought by Industrial Commercial Properties in 2019, who lists the property as available.

In Cleveland’s West Park neighborhood, Burlington, Ross Dress for Less and Big Lots will fill the former Kmart building. A Starbucks and ALDI will move into new buildings on the site. Retailers aim to open in late 2022.

Mudry said the former Kmart wasn’t an indication of what West Park’s community is. Just down the street you’d see nice stores and well-kept homes. But when commuters drove through West Park, they saw a big, vacant building.

She said it’s now a success story, since they waited long enough to get developments that would meet the needs of the community. The stores match what residents wanted, and take into account things like walkability, she said.

“It’s really fine line to come up with a project that bridges all of those gaps,” Mudry said. I think that’s testament to the strength of the neighborhood.”

In places like Chapel Hill Mall in Akron, old department stores are being turned into warehousing and nonretail spaces.

One thing Bichara, Marshall and Mudry agree on is that cities should not rush and take the first thing that can fill these vacant stores.

Vacant storefronts aren’t pleasing to see, but they don’t show all the work being done behind the scenes, Bichara said.

“For us, it’s about not making decisions that are reactionary but are more thoughtful in nature,” Bichara said of Middleburg Heights. “… You have to have the stomach for it to hold what you believe is the correct path for your community.”

He said the city can change zoning and sometimes incentivize developers, but control is up to the property owners. And there are plenty of properties to keep track of.

While vacant Kmarts can become a blight, many of them have been redeveloped in some way.

The building at 3250 West 65th has gone from a Kmart to a Roses. The store in Eastlake was demolished in favor of a Walmart. A Kmart in Euclid on Babbit Road is now Pollak Distributors.

There are thousands of counter-examples to the vacant storefront, historian Schultz said, of Kmart being turned into something else. Because many were in residential neighborhoods, they aren’t always becoming stores again, he said.

Christine Nelson, vice president of regional business development at the economic development agency Team NEO, said some former big-box stores have made good sites for warehousing and other industrial applications. The Randall Park mall in North Randall, for example, had great highway access and public transportation set up, making it work well for an Amazon.

Others are in residential neighborhoods and don’t make good fits. Team NEO doesn’t do much development in the retail space, she said.

But retail market does tend to favor very-large or small locations. Kmart was in the middle space wise, Schultz said.

Tearing down the buildings is more common though than reuses, she said.

“We’re not seeing it as often as were seeing them torn down and something new being built on the same space,” she said.

Still, there’s hundreds of them just like the stores in Medina and Middleburg Heights.

Kmarts across the county captured Schultz’s intrigue, leading him to work on a book about the chain and inspiring his creation of bluepageswiki.org, sort of Wikipedia for places like former retail stores.

Kmart, he said, is a story of how nothing is permanent.

“It’s really difficult to overstate the stranglehold that Kmart had on…