Super Kmart-Brookpark Rd, Parma, OH

Daniel · Post by **Daniel** » 08 Sep 2007 22:06

This store looks like a typical Super-K on the outside, but inside there is clearly repainted 60's wall lettering on some of the departments, making me think the store is a lot older than it looks on the outside. Does anyone know when this store opened? Could there have been a grocery next door that they just took over when they expanded the store to a Super K? I also noticed the K Cafe has been walled over and magazines put in it's place. There are still some tables and chairs in the greenhouse window area in the front of the store, for reading magazines, I suppose.

wnetmacman · Post by **wnetmacman** » 08 Sep 2007 22:22

Not to rain on the parade, but I think this is an original Super Kmart. Looking at the Local.live.com shot of the store, it has the original Super K footprint, and has little evidence of being added to. In addition, I've only been in 4 Super K stores, all of which are now closed (West Monroe, Alexandria, Baton Rouge and Lafayette, LA) and they not only had this footprint, they had what appeared to be the 70s signage.

This is the Parma store:

This is the Lafayette store, not yet overgrown:

Daniel · Post by **Daniel** » 09 Sep 2007 06:11

That's what confused me, the 70's looking signage inside. The only other Super K I was in was in Fresno, Ca, and it was modern inside and out. I didn't think it had been added onto, but like I say that lettering looks identical to what they were using in the 60's and 70's.

Jeff · Post by **Jeff** » 09 Sep 2007 11:00

This looks identical to the four stores here that were Super K (ok, one still exists in Carson, CA).

I don't know what the carson store looks like inside, but the former stores in Yorba Linda, CA, La Habra and Aliso Viejo looked like this.

On a side note, the La Habra store has been empty since Kmart pulled out of it. The other two stores were transformed to a Home Depot and Lowes.

rich · Post by **rich** » 09 Sep 2007 12:04

If this is the Brookpark & Ridge store, it was built in the early 70s and had Cleveland's first post-centennial A&P next door (the section on the Left with the barrell vault canopy or display glass). If memory serves, it's on the Brooklyn/Cleveland side of Brookpark.

Daniel · Post by **Daniel** » 09 Sep 2007 20:01

Yes, it is the Brookpark & Ridge store. I never would have guessed it had been remodeled/expanded if it weren't for the vintage lettering on the walls. Interesting to know it was an A&P there.

wnetmacman · Post by **wnetmacman** » 09 Sep 2007 20:42

If I were a betting man, I'd say that the Best Buy/Staples just east of the Super K was the original store. The display glass was common to the standardized Super K, where the KCafe was.

submariner · Post by **submariner** » 09 Sep 2007 21:03

wnetmacman wrote:If I were a betting man, I'd say that the Best Buy/Staples just east of the Super K was the original store. The display glass was common to the standardized Super K, where the KCafe was.

Definitely a standard Super K, identical to the Lincoln Park, MI store among others. I've only known of one Kmart conversion to a Super K, which is the one I worked at on Van Born Road in Taylor, MI, store 4059. This store was straight out of the 70's (opened in the 60's) until it's conversion in 1999. When we cleaned out the storage corner of the old layaway loft, we found several photo albums from the store's early days, when the company would hold employee Christmas parties and such. I still have a trinket from the store, two ginormous 8" floppy discs labeled as diagnostic programs for the POS systems dated in the early 80's. The store was expanded back, and to the left, taking over what I was told was an old Farmer Jack, but I'm not exactly sure on that, and I found no evidence that it was ever a Kmart Foods, as the wall between was solid brick.

Via Live Local:

Swifty · Post by **Swifty** » 10 Sep 2007 16:57

That's interesting - I've never seen a regular (a.k.a. 'Big K') Kmart remodeled to resemble a Super K before.

For that matter, I rarely have seen an exterior of a Kmart updated at all since the early 1990s.

One of our local Kmarts just recieved what I would call a 'whitewash' on the inside. They painted the walls stark-white and put up some horrendous blue lettering. I'll try to snap a few pics soon. The lettering looks really bad.

This is OT, but does Kmart still build any new stores since their bankruptcies?

Toby Radloff · Post by **Toby Radloff** » 05 Oct 2007 09:39

The Super K mart on Brookpark Road is a new-build...it was never anything else. This store replaced a K mart a few blocks east at Brookpark and Ridge Roads, which is currently a Best Buy and a Staples, with a couple of vacant stores. When the former K mart building was first remodeled, Best Buy's neighbors were Casa LaSalle Furniture, Value World (a thrift store), and Office Depot. Staples moved into the former Casa LaSalle, Value World moved to Middleburg Heights, and Office Depot closed several years back when that chain pulled out of NE Ohio. The former Office Depot was used off and on for temporary Halloween and Christmas decoration stores. As for the former A&P at Brookpark and Ridge, it became a Rini's Stop-N-Shop after A&P pulled out of OH (A&P was there for only 2 years or so), then became an HH Gregg appliance store after Stop-N-Shop closed in the mid-1990's.