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I drove by the BEST warehouse in Ashland, VA last Saturday and the porcelain-on-steel BEST sign that covered the south side of the warehouse is gone. Supposedly it was the world's largest sign of its type at one time. However, the old BEST "B" logo still remains on a second floor window in the former corporate office part of the building, facing US 1.

animal noses wrote:Hey all,

This is my first post in a community I've been observant of for some time now; it's good to be here. Does anybody recall having a Best Products store near them? There was one, maybe two, up/down here in Grand Rapids, Michigan that closed in the late 1990's. One of the buildings sat empty for at least four years; i regret having not taken pictures of it.

One of those Grand Rapids stores, in fact, was in an enclosed mall (Rogers Plaza). It replaced Turn Style (discounter from Chicago). It's been cut up for Big Lots and other stores. It's one of the only BEST stores I knew of in a mall.

When I was a kid, I used to enjoy going to the BEST in the City of Industry (60 at Azusa) and my favorite display was the vacuum cleaners. It was part of the huge Puente Hills East shopping center. Their space at the corner of Castleton and Hanover was razed for the construction of a new updated Chili's Restaurant, Costco gas station AND the old Best parking lot became Costco.

Note: I loved the simple logo that it had, where the B is smallest and T was largest. More on that in Wikipedia.

socalgrocer

runchadrun wrote:There is a Best store (closed, of course) in Northridge, CA, on Nordhoff just west of Tampa. The sign on the building and the parking lot sign are still there. The parking lot is mostly empty though there are a few smaller businesses in what's left of that part of the shopping center.

Wal-Mart wants to tear it down, along with some of the other business in the shopping center, and open a 24-Hour store. There is already a Wal-Mart a couple of miles to the north, but this new location is across the street from a major mall and within about 1/2 mile radius of Target, Kmart, and Costco. There is much community opposition to this store, so we will see what happens.

Is the Wal*Mart a no-go?

Drove by the site yesterday...and was amazed the BEST sign is still in place.

Walgreens is taking the building closest to the street...lead me to believe no Wal*Mart.

Dean wrote:Is the (Northridge) Wal*Mart a no-go?

Drove by the site yesterday...and was amazed the BEST sign is still in place.

Walgreens is taking the building closest to the street...lead me to believe no Wal*Mart.

The proposed Walmart is dead. There was overwhelming community opposition (channeled through the local Neighborhood Council) to the deal and that killed it. I thought they were going to tear down everything on that end of the shopping center but they actually wanted to create some kind of Frankenstein store combining the exisiting Best and Levitz buildings to form the Walmart.

Walgreens is taking over the former Tower Records. I drove by the other day and saw the "coming soon" sign but I'm not sure if they are tearing it down or building a new structure. Walgreens likes drive-thru pharmacies and since Tower has 3 sides facing the parking lot they should be able to easily adapt it.

I remember seeing the Northridge store on the news after the Northridge earthquake. It had received pretty major (and photogenic, I suppose) damage.

Update on the Northridge store: The Best sign is finally down and the Best and adjoining Levitz are now being remodeled. The Best will become an Office Max and 24 Hour Fitness while Levitz will become a Best Buy and other stores. As I noted above, the Tower Records will become a Walgreens. There's an independent furntiture store next to the old Tower in the same building that's having a going out of business sale so I assume Walgreens is taking the whole building. Walgreens usually likes to build their own buildings from scratch so I wonder if it's being torn down. Construction has been going for about a month.

A rendering is at http://www.redmountainretailgroup.com/p ... -d-48.html

Chad.....the former Tower in Monterey Park, they just gutted the interior and made it a Walgreens. No exterior remodel at all (except the main doors were changed and the yellow tile was taken out).

We used to have 2 Best Products store in the Philadelphia area. The first was located at PA Route 213 and Woodbourne Road, as part of the Oxford Valley Mall/Lincoln Plaza/Sasame Place complex. The second was located at Roosevelt Boulevard and Comly Road, across the street from the National Biscuit Company (Nabisco/Kraft Foods) plant. This particular Best location originally opened as Basco. This Best had the final "BEST" logo right on the 40 foot tall "O" of "BASCO".

The Langhorne Best has since been demolished, and replaced with a medical facility, and the Philadelphia Basco/Best is now a Self Storage Facility.

Former BEST stores that end up converted to other uses are going to be the exception rather than the rule. This is due to the construction used in a lot of locations - since the warehouse portion of the store was on the second floor, extra bracing was required and there are a lot of support columns on the first floor, making it unsuitable for most modern uses.

MikeRa wrote:WThis particular Best location originally opened as Basco. This Best had the final "BEST" logo right on the 40 foot tall "O" of "BASCO".

The Langhorne Best has since been demolished, and replaced with a medical facility, and the Philadelphia Basco/Best is now a Self Storage Facility.

that sign was, at one time, in the guiness book of world records for being the largest sign of one kind or another.

i think i bought an atari 2600 game there in 1981 or thereabouts.

I just came across this site of Best buildings designed by SITE:
http://www.siteenvirodesign.com/proj.best.php

Why did Best have to build such bland stores in California!