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| Original newspaper photo of Kmart #9408 on the left, and Gemini's recreation of that photo in colorized form on the right. Other than the odd windows Gemini put to the right of the entrance and slightly darker paint colors - not bad at all. |
Kmart #9408
7385 52nd Place East, Bradenton, FL - Creekwood Crossing
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| Today's post is a presentation of Manatee County retail |
While the overall story of Kmart is a sad one, especially when you see what's become of the company as of 2026 (can you believe they found a way to shrink that Miami store even more?! - Just check out that linked post and see for yourself!), the story of some individual Kmart stores is even more tragic than that of the company itself. At the turn of the millennium, sure Kmart had some cracks showing, but they were still a chain of over 2,000 stores and were still trying to find ways to adapt even as external pressures kept mounting. Still trying to maintain that vast store base, Kmart was opening new stores all the way until the company declared bankruptcy in 2002 - the year the last new Kmart opened. The last few stores Kmart built on their own were quite nice, but sadly, not many made it out of the bankruptcy closure waves. Kmart chose to cut many of these newer stores with higher rent in favor of older locations with lower expenses - a move many say was yet another death blow for Kmart, throwing away the nicest stores like that - the stores that showed Kmart in a better light than than the 40-year-old deferred maintenance ones. In that final push for new stores, Florida managed to receive two 21st century Kmart stores - one in Apopka that opened in a converted Builder's Square (scroll to the end of the post at that link to see it), and this total new-build in Bradenton. The Apopka store opened in March 2001, with Bradenton opening a month later, making the Creekwood Crossing Kmart the last Kmart to ever open in Florida. Even worse, both of those 2001-opened Florida stores were cut in a 2003 closure wave, neither store given much of a chance to prove itself. A sad story indeed, but this particular Kmart always intrigued me being it was the last new Kmart to open in Florida, and a rare 2000's newbuild in a modern(ish) power center to boot. After learning about this store's very quick rise and fall we'll see what's left of the place today, and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at what remains from Kmart all these years later - enough to intrigue me to visit the building and write this post, at least! Anyway, we'll get to the current photos in a little bit, but first, let's learn a little more about this former Kmart store:
The areas around and to the east of I-75 in Manatee County have been a hotbed for new development for the last three decades, with the development pushing further east as every year passes. In the late 1990's, most of the eastward development was still concentrated around I-75 itself, with the parcels right next to the interstate itself prime plots for commercial development. One of the first major power centers to be built near I-75 in Bradenton was the Creekwood Crossing, a 447,000 square foot shopping center to be constructed alongside the new residential neighborhood of Creekwood immediately behind it.
Due to its massive size, Creekwood Crossing's construction drew some controversy from the residents of the new Creekwood development behind it. The plans for the new shopping center placed its main entrance onto Creekwood Boulevard, the main entrance into the residential neighborhood. The traffic light at SR 70 and Creekwood Boulevard would serve to direct traffic into both the shopping center and the neighborhood, with a supplemental entrance into the center connecting directly with SR 70 designed as a "right in/right out" connection. Residents in the neighborhood wanted a traffic light installed at the center's supplemental entrance on SR 70 to take pressure off the entrance road into their community, however, FDOT ultimately determined a traffic light at that location was unfeasible. Even though that wasn't the answer residents wanted to hear, the complaints died off after FDOT released their decision and the center was able to be constructed as planned.
The Creekwood Crossing complex would consist of anchors Kmart, Lowe's Home Improvement, and Bealls department store, in addition to a number of smaller in-line tenants and outparcel restaurants. Being headquartered in Bradenton, the opening of the center's new Bealls (now Bealls Florida) store took a lot of the spotlight upon its opening, getting an entire write-up in the Bradenton Herald.
Even though we won't be seeing the Bealls Florida store in this post, this isn't the last we'll be seeing of the Bealls company today.
While Bealls managed to open at Creekwood Crossing in February 2001, Kmart took another two months to open, with Kmart holding its grand opening on April 4, 2001. Even though this was one of the last few Kmart grand openings to ever be held, Kmart still went all out with giveaways, promotions, "celebrity" appearances, and even a model talent search - who wouldn't want to be the next fresh face of Kmart!
Being so new when it closed, it's hard to tell if this store was truly a flop or just Kmart wanting out of a pricier lease. There was certainly potential with this location given how the area was about to explode in population, but Kmart wasn't in a position to wait out higher sales as the company was fighting to stay alive while in bankruptcy. Interestingly, in one of the articles we'll see in a little bit about this store's closing, Creekwood Crossing's own landlord was quoted as stating "Kmart was never a good fit for Creekwood". Elaborating on that statement, the landlord continued, "It's a very strong area with good, strong incomes. Kmart has a tendency to go for lower incomes." Even to myself, I was surprised when I first stumbled upon this store and saw an old Kmart in the middle of an early 2000's power center, as that was not a common sight!
After closing 284 stores shortly after declaring bankruptcy in 2002, Kmart shed another 326 stores in early 2003 before fully emerging from bankruptcy proceedings in May of that year, 25% of Kmart's store base gone after all that.
Being included in that 2003 closure sweep, the Creekwood Kmart would close for good by March 2003, a month shy of the store's 2nd birthday. The closing of the Creekwood Kmart left Bradenton with two other Kmart stores - one that only lasted another year located at Cortez Blvd. and 14th Street West (since demolished for a Lowe's), and one that lasted for a surprisingly long time on Manatee Ave. West before closing in February 2020 (and was transformed into a very nice Target shortly after).
Following Kmart's closure, the search was on to find a new life for the 103,000 square foot, practically new space. According to this article, it seemed like Target was the name most tenants wanted to see fill the Kmart space. At the time, Target's only store in Bradenton was in the older part of town on Tamiami Trail, the opposite side of town from Creekwood. Honestly, I think Target would have been a better fit for Creekwood from the start than Kmart, especially if the landlord (as I shared before) felt the average Creekwood shopper skewed a little more higher income. Getting Target here from the start probably would have saved the landlord a lot of trouble too, as I can only imagine they'd still be open here today! (And even though Kmart and Walmart were both willing to give east Bradenton a chance early on, Target never ended up opening a store in this part of town until 2025).
While Target was the wish, that never panned out, and the landlord said the most likely outcome for the former Kmart building was that it would get split into three smaller spaces.
While the landlord was confident he'd find a replacement for Kmart, the bankruptcy courts held up the search for a little while as Kmart debated whether it should keep the leases of the closing stores and find new tenants themselves, or turn the leases back to the landlords to do that work instead.
The previous article revealed that Kmart was on the hook for $875,000/year in rent should they retain the lease, and they would be responsible to find new tenants that would cover (or ideally, pay more than) that to Kmart to cover the expenses. Ultimately Kmart decided use the bankruptcy court's power to get out of their leases without any penalty, letting Creekwood's landlord take back the lease and resume its own tenant search.
Unlike some of those older Kmart buildings that proved harder to retenant, Creekwood's landlord remained confident his former Kmart building would find a new life fast, and he turned out to be right.
Before we get to this store's post-Kmart life, here's one last article showcasing a picture of the Creekwood store. I guess being the newest Kmart in the area, this was the local paper's go-to for Kmart stock photos at the time, as I was surprised to find this many of a store that was only open for 23 months!
Only 7 months after Kmart closed, it was revealed that Bealls Outlet (now Bealls) would be taking a portion of the former Kmart building, the plan to divide the space into three separate tenants ultimately coming to fruition.
Bealls Outlet took the left-most portion of the building, where Kmart's main entrance was located. Being only a few doors down from a main-line Bealls Department Store, the hometown brand was able to run both of its formats in the same shopping center, a situation that does happen from time to time. In addition to Bealls Outlet, the center slice of the former Kmart became home to a furniture store (which was an odd 3rd party run Macy's Furniture Clearance Center), with the right side of the building and former garden center area becoming home to a gym.
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| Photo courtesy of Google Streetview - 2011 |
Following the subdivision work, the building's facade was kept in-tact from the Kmart days. Other than the new entrance carved out for the furniture store, this building is practically original, even down to the paint color.
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| Photo courtesy of Google Streetview - 2018 |
Come 2018, Bealls Outlet did some remodeling to their space, redoing the facade and adding new paint, but otherwise leaving the original entryway architecture in-tact. The Macy's Furniture Store had closed by this time and become home to a new Big Lots (complete with a new facade), and the gym rebranded to LA Fitness.
Skipping ahead to the present, we find some new signage on the Bealls side of the building to reflect the chain's new branding, Big Lots closed, and LA Fitness also had closed and been replaced by a Sky Zone trampoline park.
Like many of the larger Bealls Outlet stores of late, this location was chosen to include a new Home Centric store-within-a-store. Home Centric is Bealls' answer to Home Goods, and while there are some Home Centric stand-alone locations out there, most Home Centric stores exist as a co-brand with Bealls.
We'll start off today's post by taking a look at the Bealls side of the building, which is probably the most interesting slice of the former Kmart today.
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| Photo courtesy of Google Streetview - 2011 |
Until the mid-2010's, the Bealls Outlet space was actually more interesting, as Bealls Outlet didn't change anything to Kmart's former entryway originally. Kmart's original sliding entry doors and vestibule survived the initial conversion, but did not survive Bealls Outlet's 2010's remodeling sweep that brought most of the chain's stores up to the current look.
Many of Bealls Outlet's 2010's remodels, especially where Bealls had larger stores and the freedom to perform facade upgrades, received new entryway doors like what we see here, which open into a small cart corral that runs between the two doors (or off to the side of a single door in the smaller stores). While I wish I could have seen the original Kmart entryway set-up, at least the overhang is still original to Kmart.
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| Bealls Outlet's recent rebranding to just "Bealls" and Bealls' rebranding to "Bealls Florida" is very confusing, I know, so if I keep switching the terminology around by accident I apologize! |
Stepping inside, Bealls clearly did some work to the place, but the interior overall still feels vaguely Kmart (those strip lights will do that!). Appropriately, Bealls occupies the space that would have contained the majority of Kmart's clothing departments, so the product selection on this side of the building hasn't changed all that much over the last 25 years!
The wall to my right is the partition that separated Bealls from the old furniture store/Big Lots space, with the photo above looking from the front of the store toward the back, where the Home Centric section is today (and where the hanging department signs switch from red to green).
That square ceiling vent appears to be a Kmart remnant, as Kmart stores of this vintage used those same diffusers. A little more modern and subtle than the famous large round diffusers, but air vents seem to be one of the hardier Kmart relics to stick around in a conversion!
For a taste of what this store would have looked like when it was still a Kmart, I was lucky enough to have been able to visit an identical (but mirrored) version of this same building type while it was still open as a Kmart. You can check out that nearly identical store in West Palm Beach here. The West Palm Beach store I just linked to opened in 1998 as the 4th to last new Kmart to open in Florida.
Even though I spent all of our time on the Home Centric side of the store talking about Kmart, I do want to comment on Home Centric itself. While Bealls Outlet has always sold housewares, the recent addition of Home Centric was designed to make housewares seem like a larger focus for these stores and give the chain its answer to Home Goods. These Bealls/Home Centric combo stores are basically the equivalent of a TJMaxx/Home Goods combo, and I think Bealls pulls off the "classier" (aka less messy) outlet store vibe the TJX brands go after compared to stores like Ross and Burlington.
Having been born out of a department store chain, Bealls stores feel much nicer than some of the other off-brand competitors, which is why I think the description of "classier" outlet store works here. The remodels of the last decade really helped modernize the stores too, and I can't say I've ever seen a truly messy Bealls either.
Looking toward the front vestibule, you'll notice some square lights in place of the light strips we saw throughout the rest of the store. I believe those square lights are a product of the vestibule's reconstruction.
Back outside, here's one final look at Kmart's original front facade before we turn our attention to the rest of the building:
Moving along to the center slice of the Kmart building, we find the former Big Lots store. The Creekwood Big Lots opened in August 2017 as one of the last stores the company opened before rolling out the "Store of the Future" format, which was the layout new Big Lots stores used from 2018 until the chain went under in 2025.
The Creekwood Big Lots closed in mid-2024, as part of a closure sweep announced before the entire chain announced its liquidation later that year.
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| Photo courtesy of Google Maps |
I didn't make it to this Big Lots before it closed for good, but we really aren't missing anything much. Mid-2010's Big Lots stores weren't anything super exciting, and Big Lots gutted and rebuilt this slice of the store before opening, removing anything the furniture store may have left behind from Kmart (if they even left anything behind, that is).
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| Photo courtesy of Google Maps |
I pulled a couple of photos of the Creekwood Big Lots from Google Maps for posterity, both focusing on the furniture department, which ran the right side of the building (roughly 1/3rd of the floor space). Other than the hanging department signs, there really wasn't much else in terms of decor in here - Big Lots really went for a minimalist look before trying to make the stores "classier" with Store of the Future!
The Big Lots space spent the fall of 2025 as a Spirit Halloween store, however, following that brief tenure, a more permanent tenant has this space in its sights. Interestingly, Bealls Florida will be downsizing from their larger store at the other end of the plaza and moving directly next door to their off-price counterpart. Bealls Florida has been taking opportunities to downsize their large-format 1990's and 2000's stores of late as department stores have mostly declined in recent times - Bealls Florida not immune to the general problems of that sector. Many of those downsizing attempts usually involve subleasing chunks of those large buildings, with this being one of the rarer cases of a true relocation to a smaller storefront. The off-price stores are clearly the bread and butter of the larger Bealls company, with the mainline Bealls Florida stores either closing or shrinking of late. Overall though, it's probably better that Bealls Florida evolves with smaller stores rather than going out of business completely, so it's nice to see a department store chain trying to modernize rather than slowly fade away like many of the other competitors in that field.
At the time of my visit to Creekwood, the remodel of the former Big Lots space into a Bealls Florida had only just begun (I could hear people working inside when I walked by the front doors). As such I don't know what Bealls Florida's remodel will entail, but hopefully it won't impact this segment of wall between Big Lots' old entryway and that of Sky Zone's. Why do you ask? This piece of wall still retains Kmart's original design!
The pink bands you see are actually the color of the bricks the facade was constructed with, interwoven within the panels of tan bricks for a unique design.
On the far right side of the former Kmart building, we find Sky Zone. While Sky Zone's signage is located above what used to be Kmart's Garden Center entrance, the main entrance into the trampoline park is actually around the corner by the old auto center:
It's interesting that Sky Zone picked the less-noticiable former auto center doors as their main entrance over the prominent garden center door, but I guess the way the former auto center juts out from the main building makes for a better lobby area.
While the auto bays themselves were closed in, the location of those windows makes the former location of the bay doors pretty obvious. Other than closing in the auto bays, the rest of the facade on this side of the building remains original to Kmart. Much like the Big Lots slice we just saw, the interior of this portion of the building was totally gutted and rebuilt too, which I figured considering this space was a gym before becoming a trampoline park.
Even though most of the new tenants heavily remodeled their interiors in this building, it was nice to see most of the original facade remains all these years later. That certainly made this tour of Florida's last Kmart store a little more interesting, being that we could actually visualize what that store looked like during its first two years!
The last two photos look across the front of the former Kmart building as I was pulling out of the parking lot, trying to outrun the afternoon thunderstorm that was starting to brew. As we wrap up this post, we get one final look at Kmart's old entryway, and a glimpse at what could have been a more common sight around the country had Kmart been in a better place in the early 2000's.
Anyway, that's all I have for now. Posting on AFB will resume in two weeks on August 23rd, so be sure to check that out! So until the next post,
AFB
