Big Lots #550 - Avon Park, FL

Winn-Dixie #616 / Big Lots #550

818 US Highway 27 South, Avon Park, FL - Avon Square

Today's post is a presentation of Highlands County retail

     Since we just toured the more modern (relatively speaking) Avon Park Winn-Dixie over on AFB, I figured it would only be appropriate to cover the original Avon Park Winn-Dixie while that store is still fresh on our minds (and similarly to some of my pictures of the Marketplace next door, many of the photos in this post are a decade old, so it also seemed like a good time to clean off all the virtual dust covering these photos as well!). Located just a few hundred feet south of Avon Park's (now former) Winn-Dixie Marketplace was this older Winn-Dixie store, which was original to the shopping center's 1975 construction. Some interesting things to see here at the original Winn-Dixie, and we'll get back on track to modern times after a quick history lesson (part of which will be a recap if you've already read the AFB post):

     The original Avon Park Winn-Dixie opened for business in December 1975, opening around the same time as many of the other stores in Avon Square (with the exception of W.T. Grant, which celebrated its grand opening by holding a liquidation sale, but more on that situation was discussed over on AFB). Due to the demise of Grant's, Winn-Dixie #616 would carry the claim of being Avon Square's largest anchor until JCPenney was found to replace Grant's, with that store opening just over a year later in January 1977.

     With JCPenney leaving Avon Square for a new store down the road at Sebring's Lakeshore Mall in 1992, the soon-to-be-vacant 53,000 square foot JCPenney box left an opportunity for Winn-Dixie. With Winn-Dixie going all-in on store upgrades and remodeling in the 1990's (peak time for the Marketplace format), Winn-Dixie decided to make the jump a few doors up to the larger space to bring Avon Park a more modern store. The 1975 Winn-Dixie had never been expanded during its 19 years in business, so locals were going to be in for a treat when the new store opened featuring 20,000 extra square feet and every bell and whistle the company had to offer at the time. While Winn-Dixie's move filled the largest box at Avon Square when that happened in July 1994, that left the old Winn-Dixie looking for a new tenant. While there was a 2 year gap between JCPenney moving and the new Winn-Dixie Marketplace opening, the original Winn-Dixie was scooped up almost immediately by a new type of retailer that was expanding like crazy throughout Florida at the time: Big Lots.

     Opening on November 6, 1994, Big Lots (and Closeout Man) arrived in Avon Park to save the town from high prices. While Big Lots' arrival helped fill another vacancy at Avon Square, locals were also happy that the The Closeout Store would mostly fill the void Walmart left behind when they too moved out of Avon Park in favor of a new store by Lakeshore Mall (and we'll talk more about that old Walmart later). According to the article two photos back, Big Lots was given a really good deal on rent for this space per the store manager, that being the primary reason Big Lots chose this location for a new store (and probably the same reason for most of Big Lots' site selections in the 1990's). 

     Big Lots remained in Avon Park until March 2025, following the company's total liquidation after years of straying from selling closeouts (which is what made the chain so popular to begin with). Since I already went over all those issues not too long ago I'll spare everyone from all that detail again today, however, the closure of Big Lots now leaves Avon Square with two large voids to fill - this 33,000 square foot one, and the 27,000 square feet of the Winn-Dixie Marketplace Aldi lopped off following that store's closure in October 2024.

     While it remains to be seen just how Avon Square will bounce back again in 2025, let's go back in time to 2015 when retail seemed a little more stable, Kmarts could still be found here and there, Albertsons still had 4 stores in Florida, and I would have thought a person to be out of their mind had they predicted that Winn-Dixie was going to start a revival just to be sold to Aldi. While it's hard to believe that was all 10 years ago already, let's see what this Big Lots looked like ten years ago as we walk through those sliding doors (which aren't original - those were installed by Big Lots to replace a setup like this) for a glimpse of Winn-Dixie's past:

     While I never saw a Big Lots that kept any of Winn-Dixie's wall decor in-tact (at least in Florida), there were a few older Big Lots stores out there in old Winn-Dixies that kept the original floor tiles in place, and this was one of them. Throughout the store Winn-Dixie's old colored tile stripes remained visible, these tiles most likely hailing from a remodel this store received in the mid-1980's. While the tiles in the vestibule (and elsewhere throughout the store) became quite patchworked over the years as Big Lots fixed floor issues, we still got a pretty good idea of how this Winn-Dixie was laid out when it was still open.

     Moving into the front right corner of the store from the vestibule, the red tiles from the front end transition into green striped tiles approaching Big Lots' right side wall. Those green tiles marked the beginning of the produce department, with the green tiles continuing down the right side of the store.

     Some more green appears on the floor as we move further toward the back of the store through Big Lots' seasonal department, located in the front right corner of the building during my 2015 visit.

     One note about my 2015 photos from this store - most of them are focused on the floor. That wasn't due to nerves or anything, the floor just happened to be the most interesting part of this store back then!

     Now at the back wall, the produce green turns into "The Beef People" red to denote the old meat department. However, what used to be a row of refrigerated meat coolers became home to paper products and pet beds during the Big Lots era.

     Some more red stripes for everyone.

     Now at the left side of the store, here's one of the few photos I took that actually looked across the building and wasn't focused on the floor! From where I was standing we are looking across the store's back actionway from the back of the furniture department, all areas where Winn-Dixie's striped tiles were mostly absent.

     However, walking closer toward the front of the store, we find more striped and colored tiles appear under the furniture displays.

     A classic late 1990's/early 2000's light-up furniture sign graced the wall of this store during my 2015 visit, and to go along with that Big Lots relic, some more stripes from Winn-Dixie appear on the floor below, most likely denoting this store's old deli/bakery department (the service counter of which would have been in the corner where Big Lots built that office area).

     Nearing Big Lots' front end once again, here are more of the old red tiles that once graced Winn-Dixie's front end.

     Being that I wasn't too focused on getting overview shots of this store during my 2015 visit, the above photo is one I pulled from Google Maps just to give a little more sense of what this store looked like until the late 2010's, with the old Winn-Dixie tiles still present too.

     While I'm 99% sure that octagonal clock next to the thank you sign was just a cheap clock Big Lots pulled from the salesfloor to put up there (and not a Winn-Dixie relic), seeing a clock over the front end like that just seems like such a 1970's/1980's supermarket thing. The thank you sign was a nice relic of Big Lots too, as many of those signs (which were from the early 2000's) were removed from most stores by the late 2010's. But like the sign said, I did follow through and come again - just 5 years after this initial visit. However, before we tour this store again, there is something of note that happened in that long span between my two visits:

     On February 9, 2018, a 17-year-old arsonist set fires in this store's bathroom in addition to lighting some bedding items on fire as well. That incident caused smoke damage throughout the store, as well as water damage from the activation of the building's sprinkler system. Due to that, all of the store's inventory to be declared a total loss, and the store remained closed for 5 months to repair the damages and restock. During that time the store was closed, a light remodel was done to the building too.

     The Avon Park Big Lots reopened on July 19, 2018, and in addition to the new paint job on the exterior, we will see some significant changes once we step inside again:

     Moving ahead to my 2020 tour of this store, we see that as part of the post-fire remodel, the original Winn-Dixie floor was ripped up and replaced by new white tiles. Big Lots also installed a cart corral in the vestibule too, running through the space that would have housed Winn-Dixie's customer service counter (and you can still see from the exterior where the window height changes to mark the location of the raised manager's office that once accompanied Winn-Dixie's customer service counter).

     With the old Winn-Dixie tiles gone, this store was just a pretty average Big Lots for the last 7 years of its life. This store never received the company's full "Store of the Future" redesign in the early 2020's either, probably due to all the work that had just happened post-fire in 2018.

     White tiles, white walls, white mattresses, a white cardboard display of white bottles of shampoo, all hanging department signs removed - you'd never know this building used to be a Winn-Dixie from this angle anymore.

     In 2015 we saw pet supplies and paper products accompanying the old red tiles of the meat department, just for that same area to give way to garbage cans and storage tubs overlooking white vinyl.

     Other than the vestibule, the last trace of Winn-Dixie in this building were the classic round air diffusers on the ceiling. Much like how those diffusers and Kmart go hand in hand, the same holds true for 1970's and 1980's Winn-Dixie stores!

     When the store was rearranged after the fire, seasonal merchandise moved to the front left corner from the front right, with furniture pushed more toward the center of the salesfloor and housewares on the right side. The new layout was a fairly rough implementation of the "Store of the Future" prototype, which had first launched in 2017 but didn't make its full rollout until late 2018/early 2019, right after this store reopened.

     While most other signage (and even the floor) were removed in 2018, the old "Thank you, Come again!" sign managed to survive the fire and remained (most likely) until this store's very end.

     While I managed to visit a number of Big Lots stores around Central Florida during the company's recent liquidation (and prior closing waves as well), I never made it back here to Avon Park for a final walkthrough before the entire chain went under, so we'll be ending our coverage of this store here (and I'm sure you didn't want to see a third tour of this store shoved into this post too, but don't worry, I have some other Big Lots stores covered for the future with that level of detail!) Anyway, now that we've seen this Big Lots store and all the traces of Winn-Dixie Avon Park had to offer, we'll wrap up this post with an assortment of photos of other retail relics around Avon Square that needed a home, starting with Avon Square's unofficial third anchor - the old Walmart I mentioned before:

     Walmart has an interesting past in Avon Park, which all began right here in this building next to Avon Square (you can see the Big Lots at the far right edge of the photo for orientation). While there's a modern Walmart Supercenter in Avon Park just up the road - don't be fooled - that Walmart Supercenter didn't replace this old store. Let me explain:

     Highlands County welcomed Walmart to its retail mix in late 1984, when the company built a pair of new stores in in the county. The two new stores were to be located in South Sebring and Avon Park, and both stores ended up opening around the same around the same time too. Interestingly, the article mentions a third Highlands County Walmart was considered for Lake Placid, but that store never came to fruition in the end. As for that new store in Avon Park, Walmart was a fitting addition to the area, giving the town its first major discount chain following the demise of W.T. Grant's plans in 1975.

     After operating its two stores in the county successfully through the remainder of the 1980's, Walmart wanted to enter the 1990's by building larger stores of over 100,000 square feet to replace many of the chain's older (and much smaller) units. In 1991, Walmart purchased a large piece of land at the corner of US 27 and Schumacher Road in North Sebring, almost center of its two existing stores in Highlands County. Upon that land Walmart planned to build a new 121,000 square foot discount store, with a pad to the side to allow for a 50,000 square foot expansion into a full Supercenter at a later date. That new store was supposed to open in late 1992, however, two pairs of Florida scrub jays were found to be nesting on the site. Due to the endangered status of that bird species, Walmart had to come up with a remediation plan for relocating the birds and either buying extra land elsewhere for scrub jay habitat preservation or paying a fee to the government for developing a scrub jay nesting site.

     The scrub jay remediation process delayed the opening of the new store by over a year, with the new Walmart not opening until 1993 (and later taking advantage of that Supercenter expansion pad in 1998). 

     While Walmart building a new larger store to replace an older, smaller location nearby isn't unusual in any form, what made this particular replacement project unusual is that the single new store in North Sebring was used as a replacement for both the South Sebring and Avon Park Walmarts. Being such a large store serving a relatively small population center, and building right in the middle of those two existing stores, the justification of closing two stores to replace it with one larger one made sense here.

     What was rather interesting is that when Walmart made its store consolidation in Highlands County, the new North Sebring store took on the store number of the old South Sebring store, disregarding the old number of 717 assigned to the Avon Park location. Given the choice between South Sebring's and Avon Park's store numbers, I'm surprised Walmart picked South Sebring's, as South Sebring's store number was 666! I guess Walmart's real estate department isn't the superstitious bunch, as many chains (like Publix) skipped the number 666 entirely in their numbering sequences due to its connotations. To this day though, Walmart #666 lives on as the North Sebring Supercenter, as if there isn't any more reason to make shopping at Walmart any more hellish!

     As for old #717 in Avon Park (a much luckier sounding number given the two 7's in it), following Walmart's move down the road, the building was split into three spaces. Originally on the far left was Tractor Supply, with Bealls Outlet in the middle space with the old entrance and lastly Dollar General on the far right closest to Avon Square.

     Tractor Supply closed outright by the early-mid 2000's, giving Bealls Outlet the opportunity to jump over to Tractor Supply's slightly larger slice of the building ca. 2010. The old Bealls Outlet was retenanted by Anytime Fitness, and the building has remained as such ever since.

     While the tenant lineup here has remained stable since the early 2010's, you will notice in my photos (taken in both 2015 and 2020) that the Dollar General and Bealls Outlet sides of the building received some modifications between my two visits. The old walkway canopy was removed from the fronts of Bealls Outlet and Dollar General, with Dollar General replacing a small portion of the canopy with one of their own (leaving a few stranded columns with nothing to hold up anymore!). Bealls Outlet did not replace the canopy on their side of the building when they updated their facade and entryway, and they also removed the abandoned columns too (unlike Dollar General).

     Even though Walmart left Avon Park in 1993 and was comfortable operating one large discount store-turned-Supercenter in Highlands County for many years, the area's population began to grow going into the 2000's and after a 14-year absence, Walmart returned to Avon Park with a brand new Supercenter on the north side of town, store #3887, making Highlands County a two-Walmart kind of county again. So while you may see this very obvious old Walmart in Avon Park, now you'll know that the town's two Walmart stores don't share much of a connection at all.

     After photographing the old Walmart, I spotted this very obvious former Burger King in Avon Square's parking lot, and decided to get a few photos of it since it was quite well preserved.

     For over 20 years now, this old Burger King has been serving up loans your way as the local Amscot office, and not only retains much of its original architectural features, but also its old road sign frame too!

     This particular Burger King dates back to 1982, and is the sole outparcel to the original portion of Avon Square. Burger King remained in this building until 2001, when the home of the Whopper found a new home a few blocks north of here.

     As I was photographing the old Burger King, on the other side of US 27 I happened to spot this old Matawan Texaco building. While this building has seen some modifications over the years, the design was still very obvious, which is not something you see too often anymore with these old Matawan buildings.

     At the time I took these pictures in 2020, this building housed a Liberty Tax office. Presently, Liberty Tax has left and a new door has opened for this place as it now houses a store that sells doors.

     The original Matawan building with the service bays had been expanded a few times over the years, those expansions also leading to the original service bays on the front of the building being closed in for additional retail space and new garages being built around back. While the front pump canopy with the shingle roof was not original (probably an addition in the 1970's or 1980's when shingled gas canopies were a big thing), a second canopy was also added on the side of the building as well (possibly for diesel pumps going by the placement and design, as US 27 is a major truck route). It looked like some kind of labelscar was trying to reveal itself under all the layers of paint peeling off the second canopy, but I couldn't make out what it said, and the old GSV views aren't helpful either.

     In today's post we got to tour the original Avon Park Winn-Dixie (twice) in its most recent life as a Big Lots, we learned about the original Avon Park Walmart, and got to see an old Burger King and an old Texaco gas station too - talk about a lot going on here! Top that all off with a tour of the Avon Park Winn-Dixie Marketplace on AFB and it's been a busy day for retail between these two blogs! With that said I'll wrap things up here today. I should hopefully have some more MFR content to post in the near future as I find time to work on that, but in the meantime, more to come over on AFB in two weeks!

Until the next post,

AFB