Kmart #7294 - Vero Beach, FL - The Afterlife

Kmart #7294

1501 US Highway 1, Vero Beach, FL - Indian River Plaza

     Good evening, everyone, and welcome to today's spooky edition of My Florida Retail. On this night of horrors and nightmares, I bring to you one of the oldest and scariest tales known to the retail fan - a Spirit Halloween store in a former Kmart (cue the high pitched scream). On this evening of dead retail coming back to life to haunt our souls (and hopefully not eat our brains), we travel to the city of Vero Beach, Florida to explore this peculiar fright. It is here where we will meet one of the bravest, most daring, most fearless individuals known to man, who will risk everything to confront this undead retail specimen, My Florida Retail's very own AFB. What he's about to see might scare you, it might haunt you, it might even jump out of your computer screen and grab you (especially if you were drinking before you read this, or just watched Poltergeist), but if nothing else, it will provide to everyone an interesting conclusion to the story of the Vero Beach Kmart store...

     Since its closure in December 2019, the old Vero Beach Kmart store has sat empty. Kmart still holds the lease on this building until 2024, and a local developer wants to build a 250-unit apartment complex at the site of the old Kmart once the lease expires. Kmart's corporate entity (or whatever is left of it) hasn't seemed to show any desire to sign the lease over to the developer early (as he seemed to want, according to the article), so unless Kmart finds a new tenant for the space before the lease expires, most likely this building will be sitting empty back here, frozen in time, until it's demolished for that apartment project. However, for the 2020 and 2021 Halloween seasons, the old Kmart was home to our old retail hermit crab friend, Spirit Halloween. The pictures we'll be looking at today were taken during Spirit's 2021 bout in this building, a fun way to conclude my coverage of this store's closing (and transition it into the afterlife, as we don't need the restless spirit of Kmart wreaking havoc on the innocent people of Vero Beach because it has unfinished business to take care of - although I've heard rumors that the sequel to this year's Spirit Halloween movie was going to use that plot line! 😁)

     Even though Spirit was fully operational in here, their tiny banner pales in comparison to the sign from the original tenant. Vero Beach must have some kind of ordinance about banners on buildings, as Kmart was never allowed to hang their large "store closing" banner on the front of the building, and Spirit was limited to that tiny one hidden on the awning.

     Spirit made up for their tiny storefront sign with all these decals and posters on the front windows, making their presence in the building known.

     So for the final time, let's walk through these doors and see what relics of dead retail may be lurking in our presence...

     For their store, Spirit walled off a small space in the middle of Kmart's salesfloor, a small fraction of the Kmart building that was deep but not very wide. When Kmart was here, the view in front of me would have looked more like this, with the women's clothing and jewelry counter in view.

     Ahhh, floating dismembered arms!!! (Or just shoppers crashing my photo, you never know which when exploring undead retail). Turning to the right, our view (which used to look like this) now leads to Spirit's partition wall shortly ahead. Spirit arranged the store with adult costumes on the right side of the salesfloor, kids costumes to the left, and props and decorations in the middle.

     To display some of the props and decorations, Spirit set up a few of their famous haunted houses in the middle of the salesfloor. In front of the haunted house was a neat little prop called the Pumpkin Carve o'Matic, which was apparently one of Spirit's signature store displays for 2021. It was fun to watch, and myself and a few others who were wandering around stood there and watched it for a while.

     When Kmart left the building, they took everything inside with them. Whatever didn't sell in the fixture sale was either sent to other stores or tossed, as there weren't any fixtures of any kind left hiding behind Spirit's temporary walls.

     The orange lines on the ground were laid out by Spirit to designate their main actionways (which follow a bunch of convoluted patterns, and not really a straight line). The gray lines are Kmart's old tile markings for their former actionways.

     A Kmart classic - the giant round air diffuser - comes into view in this shot.

     This photo shows the entire width of the space Spirit occupied, looking from the back left corner of their space to the back right. I'd estimate Spirit took only one quarter of the space Kmart used, thus leaving a lot left over. It appears in recent times, Spirit has begun looking for smaller retail spaces to hermit crab in rather than the large former big-box and supermarket spaces they were famous for using in years past. As such, for the 2022 Halloween season, Spirit opted to not use the former Vero Beach Kmart building, but instead the smaller space left vacant by the Salvation Army Thrift Store at the other end of the plaza (following the Salvation Army's move to the south side of town). I'm glad I visited this store when I did, or else I'd have been out of luck seeing the inside of the old Kmart this year!

     Another Kmart classic is the giant electrical box on the pole. I don't know what exact function those boxes had (phone lines or some kind of wiring hub), but you could usually find one of them hanging around on a pole in any given Kmart.

     I visited this Spirit location only a few days before Halloween, which is why there were large chunks of the center salesfloor looking quite empty, as merchandise was being consolidated toward the walls. I said before that I got really lucky visiting this store when I did, as this was a totally unintended stop for me! I was returning home from a different trip to South Florida this day and decided to cut over from I-95 to US 1 for the rest of my drive home. I passed the Kmart and remembered Spirit was there, and the stop was certainly worth it!

     Spirit's check lanes were located in front of that purple paper along the front wall, roughly in the same area as Kmart's old check lanes.

     The black partitions to my left were used for the queueing of the line to the registers, with more children's costumes out of frame to my right.

     When I was here, Spirit had a small section of their own branded merchandise, limited to a few hats and a sweater this late in the season. Spirit has made their mark in recent years for being the largest pop-up Halloween chain in the US (especially with the glut of empty retail space out there right now), and they've also built up a bit of notoriety from being the butt of numerous jokes on the internet, which I think has made them even more popular.

     Here's one last look inside our "Spirit of Kmart", as we approach the exit...

     From the vestibule, we get a small glimpse into the empty right side of the building, where all the lights were shut off except for the security ones. Somewhat of a spooky vantage point to conclude our interior tour with...

     So I visited the Spirit of Kmart and lived to tell the tale! (And I didn't even have to use the proton pack once!) Now in the safety of the parking lot, on the way back to my car, I also spotted this example of the spirit of cars past:

     Someone with a Dodge Omni decided to go for a stroll around the local Spirit store while I was here. For a car from the 1980's, it looks like it was kept in really nice shape, and I'm sure this car has made a lot of trips to Kmart in its lifetime too!

     Also on the topic of cars in the parking lot of the old Kmart, some folks from the competition also decided to pop over and make sure the Kmart corpse was officially dead (or maybe they just wanted to buy some Halloween decorations). This SUV is used by Walmart's In-Home delivery service, which is a program that was piloted in 2019 in three markets (Kansas City, MO, Pittsburgh, PA, and Vero Beach, FL). With this program, you can order groceries from Walmart and have them delivered to your home, however, the delivery person will actually go into your home and stock everything in the refrigerator and pantry for you (which I think is a bit creepy, but that's just me). This was my first time seeing the dedicated In-Home delivery vehicle out and about. In 2022, Walmart launched their In-Home delivery service into more markets, and now includes the service as an upgrade to the Walmart+ program. For those of you not near Vero Beach, you might be seeing more of these vehicles around now too.

     Following my visit to the Spirit store, we'll jump ahead a few months to the summer of 2022. I was passing by this store early in the morning around sunrise, and pulled in for a few additional photos to conclude my coverage of this store with. The lighting on this particular morning worked out great for me, and I really like how the pictures turned out.

     With Spirit over in the former Salvation Army space for 2022, this is what the old Vero Beach Kmart looks like now, and probably will continue to look like until the lease on the building expires in 2024. The sign still up, landscaping maintained, and lights on, it only looks like Kmart hasn't opened for the day yet to the casual passer-by. I didn't get a picture of it, but Kmart's logo is still on the pylon sign out front on US 1 too. Sadly, if you walk up to the building you'll see the truth, and realize you haven't come across an operating retail relic from times gone by (you have to keep on driving down to Miami for that, and some big changes are about to come to the Miami Kmart soon if you haven't heard yet).

     The shopping center was super quiet on the morning I took these photos. I was the only person back here, with only the faint sound of cars going by on US 1 in the distance. I guess all that adds into the spooky effect from the Spirit Halloween part of this post too!

     With all of Spirit's stuff gone, looking through the one missing hurricane panel we see the empty shell of Kmart.

     I only frequented this store for the last 4 years of its life, but in that short time I grew quite fond of this place. I saw a lot of change in that short time, made some memories, and continued to grasp what little bits of the Kmart experience I could in that time. The last time I saw Kmart as a semi-decently put together retailer was in this building, the Kmart that I knew for years from childhood until the doors of this store were locked for good. That's the Kmart I want to remember. I know the last 20 years for Kmart haven't been glamorous, but up until 2019 there still seemed to be some small shreds of competency that Kmart tried to hold on to, which all fell apart shortly after this store closed. The remaining Kmart in Miami is not much more than a Kmart in name only these days - left to wither away as a glamorized closeout store stuffed in the original building's garden center.

     Just a month shy of the three year anniversary of this store's closure, my coverage of this place finally comes to an end. This is probably a terrible time to remind myself I have a few sets of photos from the closure of the Sears on the other side of town I need to post too, but I'll take the satisfaction of finishing this series and hold onto that for a little while right now! Anyway, plenty more adventures (both spooky and not spooky) to come in the future on MFR, so keep an eye out for those from myself and the other MFR contributors.

Happy Halloween everyone, and until the next post,

The Brave and Fearless AFB

Kmart #7294 - Vero Beach, FL - The Klosing Koncludes

Kmart #7294

1501 US Highway 1, Vero Beach, FL - Indian River Plaza

     While I still have one more post-closure tour from this place to write about eventually, today's post will be my last of the five sets of photos I took documenting the closure process of the Vero Beach Kmart (coming to you at long last!). While the Vero Beach Kmart closed for good on December 1, 2019, my final visit to this store while in operation happened on November 21, 2019, about a week and a half prior to the official closure date. While probably good for business (but bad for me to work in a drive down here), the closure of the Vero Beach Kmart happened on Black Friday weekend. While I would have loved to make the trip here to document the final day, I got stuck working that entire weekend - the joys of working retail (which is much less fun than driving around documenting retail, trust me!). That being said, these photos from a week and a half out will serve as our final farewell to the Vero Beach Kmart, so let's jump into this:

     A week and a half prior to the closure, it was really beginning to feel like a stereotypical store closing sale. While my coverage of the liquidation up to this point showed the store in a semi-normal state, today's tour will certainly feel much different once we step through those doors. My prior visit to this store happened on Halloween 2019, although in the three weeks between my two trips, the store began to empty out to a much higher degree, sections of the store were being dismantled, and fixture sales were in full swing (as we can tell by that guy loading his new shelf into that trailer parked out front). It's all you could ever hope to see in a closing sale, so let's head inside and see it for ourselves:

     Stepping through the entrance and looking toward the back of the building, we see this aisle with some deep-discount clothing lining the center of it, with the jewelry counter also visible to my right (where you can find a deeply-discounted necklace to go with the bargain-priced new outfit of yours - just don't let your friends at the party know you're rocking some of Kmart's liquidation designs!).

     Fashion tips aside, we'll get back on track with our tour by turning right into the hardlines side of the store, following my usual loop through the building. The selection of merchandise was certainly thinning out, with empty space from removed shelves becoming home to random pallet drops of large items being pushed out from the back.

     Following the closure of this store's pharmacy in the late 2010's, new shelving was installed in front of the windows to block the space from view. With the closing entering the final stretch, the shelving in front of the old pharmacy was removed, exposing the counter to us once again.

     In much livelier times the pharmacy looked like this. Now the rest of the store was on its way to looking like the old pharmacy space - dead and abandoned.

     All the shelving along the front wall was removed, with any remaining merchandise consolidated into the aisles out front. After who knows how many years of sitting in the same spot, a lot of nasty gunk was left to build up under those shelves.

     Another one of the usual sights at a store closing: a totally empty aisle. I believe this was an aisle in the former health and beauty department along the front wall.

     Some pools were used to fill a void where a row of shelving was removed, placing those in the middle of the office supply department now.

     We're looking toward the seasonal department in this photo, with grocery on the other side of the aisle.

     Christmas decorations were placed in some empty space in one of the grocery aisles, so you could stock up on garland and crackers for the Christmas party (to which you'll be showing off that new Kmart outfit from before!).

     Another grocery aisle had become home to toys. As we'll see in a moment, the original toy department had been mostly dismantled by this time, leaving all the remaining toys to relocate over here.

     In addition to Christmas merchandise from before, there was still plenty of summer and Halloween stuff for sale too, so Kmart had all your seasonal occasions covered.

     The main portion of the seasonal department had become home to pallets of Christmas trees, a much less classy presentation for the trees than we would have seen in Christmases past.

     Beyond the seasonal department, as we move further into the back right corner of the store, we find it totally empty. Prior to the closure, we'd have been looking at toys immediately to my right, with sporting goods and hardware following that. Now all we see is a lone employee in a large empty space hauling a pallet of scrap - a sad scene for sure.

     Turning the camera a little more to the left, we can better focus on the pure emptiness back here.

     Continuing along the back main aisle, some pallet drops of furniture appear on the inner part of the aisle, with the fixture sale piling up along the back wall (where furniture and small appliances used to be).

     Sadly, the fixture sale here was quite boring. It was all shelves, racks, tables, and such - with no fun Kmart relics appearing that I saw. 50 feet of commercial grade metal shelving isn't really something I needed lying around the house, so I left here without buying any fixtures.

     In front of the fixture sale was some more furniture, most of which were the old display models now up for sale.

     Fixture sales continued along the back of the store into the area of the old Electro-pli-mattress department, ending at the transition into men's clothes.

     Plenty of clothing racks for sale, but no bluelight. As much as I probably don't need a spinning blue light on top of a pole, one of those would have made for an interesting conversation piece for the living room, or a really funky nightlight.

     From the back of the store, here's a look down one of the center cut through aisles, where housewares and some other random merchandise were thrown together.

    Taking a quick diversion into the housewares department, here's a look at some more empty shelving as the selection of merchandise thinned out.

     Moving further along, here's another cut through aisle, this one being the aisle that separates the clothing from the hardlines side of the store.

     Crossing that transition, here's a look into what remained in the softlines half of the store. While the hardlines merchandise was thinning out, there were still lots and lots of clothes for sale here. All of the clothing departments were stocked quite full, even with most merchandise over here marked at 80% off.

     While there were plenty of baby clothes for sale, all the other baby related merchandise was in slim pickings during this visit. We have some boxes of diapers and car seats along the wall, but most of the aisles of baby merchandise were removed, making this one of the largest empty holes on the softlines side of the store.

     Since the shelves in the baby department appeared to be freshly removed, I poked around the area a bit to see if any relics had been uncovered upon the shelves' removal. Wandering around, it didn't take me long to spot the nametag in the photo above! Since the nametag had the "Big Kmart" logo on it, it had to be hiding under that shelf for at least 20 years (and who knows how long it's even been since Tina last worked here too). Me being me, I decided try salvaging the nametag (as I figured I could clean it up), however, it was stuck to the floor (as that's some high quality gunk we're looking at there). Me still being me, when the nametag wouldn't budge from the floor, I walked over to the wall and grabbed an empty peghook to use as a prybar to lift the nametag up. My idea half-worked, literally. I was able to lift up a portion of the nametag, and when I tried to yank it off the rest of the way, I snapped it in half. The part of the nametag that said "Tina" on it went flying into the air, and the rest stayed stuck to the floor. Since I broke it I gave up after that, but we still have this photo to remind us of Tina's contributions to this store, as well as AFB's dumb ideas.

     Leaving the baby department, we have plenty more clothes to see. With all the clothes in here, I'd have to imagine there was still a lot of it left to sell on the last day (unless the Black Friday weekend shoppers really picked this place clean).

     Along the left side of the building, here's a look toward the long-closed KCafe.

     After the cafe was closed, it was converted into space for the clothing department (the junior's department specifically). Even nearing the end the old cafe was still serving that purpose, just a little more empty looking than it would have looked in the past.

     Nearing the end of our loop, here's one last look at the check lanes as we get in line to make our final purchases...

     Even though this store never displayed its "Store Closing" banner on the outside of the building, it did find itself a home here in front of the check lanes. Quite appropriately, the placement of the banner allowed the store's thank you sign to read as "Thank you for Shopping Kmart Store Closing" - I don't know if that was intentional or purely coincidental, but regardless, it was fitting.

     So at long last, that concludes my coverage of the Vero Beach Kmart closing sale! (However, if you'd like to see more, Cape Kennedy Retail took a set of photos at this store in its 3rd to last day in operation, which you can view here). While I would have loved to come back one more time near the end, I did come into this trip thinking it would be my final visit to my local-ish Kmart of 4 years, so I left without any regrets. Even though I'd only shopped at this store occasionally through its final few years, it was a fun change of pace to still have a Kmart within reasonable driving distance. I grew up with Kmart, so it was sad seeing my last little fragment of the chain close up in my area. As of today I now live three hours away from my next closest Kmart, located in Miami, one of three Kmart stores left in the mainland United States as of the writing of this post. I've been to that Kmart in Miami once (and you can view my tour of that store here), and that Kmart was a sad shell of its former self when I visited in Summer 2021. At least when Kmart closed in Vero Beach, the store still looked and felt "normal" with fully stocked departments and a typical assortment of merchandise you'd expect from a large discount retailer. The Kmart of the 2020's is basically an oversized clearance outlet, and it was a really sad experience walking around that Miami store. I give the employees of that store so much credit for keeping the place up as best as they can with what merchandise they have to work with, but the experience at that store was so much different from the Kmart we all remember. The Kmart we all remember is essentially gone, even if three stores still exist out there in name. It's a tragedy what happened to Kmart (and Sears too), but at least Kmart's downfall didn't go unnoticed. Unlike many chains of the past, Kmart will live on for many years more due to the hundreds (if not thousands) of photos all of us in this community took to keep the memory of this chain alive.

     Anyway, while my coverage of the Vero Beach Kmart's closure is done, I still have the post-closure coverage to bring to you before long. That post will explore what's become of this building since Kmart's departure, so keep a lookout for that! In addition, there will still be plenty more interesting stores to explore here on MFR in the future, so be sure to keep an eye out for more new content from myself and the other contributors!

So until the next post,

AFB