Sunday, May 27, 2012

Former Super Kmart in Maple Heights, Ohio


Nicholas Eckhart


     This store is located at 5500 Warrensville Center Road in Maple Heights, Ohio. This former Super Kmart was one of the three Super Kmart stores that opened in 1997. This store sported signage with the "Super Kmart" logo on it. The first Super Kmart to use that logo opened in 1996, before then they all used the "Super Kmart Center" logo. Oddly enough, Kmart started using the "Super Kmart Center" logo again in 2001. This was the 97th Super Kmart store opened. Sadly, this store closed in the 2002 wave of closures.

     In 2003 Liberty Ford moved into the store from their previous location in Bedford. I know some people find it odd that a Car Dealer moved into a former Supercenter building, but to me it makes sense. This was a perfectly fine large building with a large parking lot and Auto bays already built. According to a site this is a 160,000 square foot building and is the largest Ford Dealership in America. It even has a Cafe inside (probably the old Kmart Cafe)! Today this store still has much of the Super Kmart look still intact on the exterior. I found a picture that shows the Super Kmart interior is mostly intact as well.

The following photos were taken on May 20, 2012.

Here is the street sign for the former Super Kmart store (is was located where the Liberty Ford sign was. Notice how there is a Petsmart sign underneath. There was a former Petsmart here too; there is a picture of the former Petsmart at the end of the post. Also, notice that there is a former Donato's in the background. There is a closer shot of that restaurant at the end of this post as well.


The former grocery side entrance. The triangle shaped metal design above the doorway was covered-up.

This is was one of the last Super Kmart stores to have a canopy built across the front, the windows are not original to Super Kmart. 

The former apparel side entrance. The former garden center entrance is on the right.

Here is a view of the former Garden center entrance. In this shot part of the auto center is visible.

Here is the former Petsmart I mentioned earlier in this post.
Here is a closer view of the former Donato's that was partially visible in the first photo.



7 comments:

  1. I wonder what its like inside? Hard thing to take photos of obviously. There showroom has to be massive!

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  2. I was there on Sunday when they were closed too!

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  3. I am the service manager at this Liberty Ford. We can fit over 100 cars in the showroom. The facility is amazing as a car dealer. Tons of modifications had to be done to the interior especially in the service department to make it suitable for our needs.

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  4. I am the service manager at this Liberty Ford. We can fit over 100 cars in the showroom. The facility is amazing as a car dealer. Tons of modifications had to be done to the interior especially in the service department to make it suitable for our needs.

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    Replies
    1. since that you are the service manager can you show us pictures of the interior like the former garden center entrance etc.

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  5. Evidently, Park Ford wants to suck on the government tit.

    It was recently reported that Ohio will receive a $190,000,000 grant from the Federal government to tear down condemned homes and crack houses in poor communities across the state which desperately need a hand up to help them recover from years of red ink, neglect and deindustrialization. This Federal grant will help those poor Ohio communities by reducing the health and safety risks associated with condemned homes, improving the appearance of those communities riddled with blight and making long abandoned properties more appealing to potential buyers. In other words, that money will help to clean up our state.

    In response to this report, Park Ford's commercially sponsored talk radio goon publicly called for that money to be given instead to privately owned companies like Park Ford so they can expand their privately owned business.

    Are you kidding me? That's what profits are for. That's what RIDICULOUS auto service charges are for. The owners of Park Ford are rich already. If they want to expand their business in order to get even richer, they should do so by spending their OWN MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR PROFITS. NOT BY SUCKING ON THE GOVERNMENT TIT.

    Park Ford's commercially sponsored talk radio goon is calling for the worst kind of socialism. The sold-out kind which helps the rich get richer while the poor get poorer. Meanwhile, the poor communities of Ohio riddled with blight and crime will get NOTHING. That is EXACTLY what Park Ford's HIRED TALK RADIO GOON is calling for.

    The same talk radio goon has also been calling for the Federal government to give handouts to the oil industry because gas prices and big oil profits are FINALLY down. This after several years in a row of record high profits and charges. What a sold-out pig.

    The hell with Park Ford, the hell with ridiculous auto service charges, the hell with big oil greed, the hell with corporate welfare, the hell with government handouts for the rich and THE HELL WITH THEIR SOLD-OUT TALK RADIO GOONS.

    By the way, did I mention that the richest 1% of Americans already own 42% of America's total wealth? Yes, really.

    The rich don't need anymore government handouts.

    ReplyDelete

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