Attention Kmart shoppers: The Miami suburb of Kendall learns that its Kmart is one of the final three in the continental US.
Stores don’t have a grand closing in the same way they have a grand opening. It is something the suburban New Jersey town of Avenel discovered when the fourth-to-last domestic Kmart closed its doors for the final time on Saturday.
The liquidation had been going on for weeks already. Any bargain hunters who shopped on the final day saw most of the store cordoned off with caution tape. In the 50 US states right now, this means there are only three Kmart stores. One of them is less than five miles from where I live in the Miami suburb of Kendall.
The first thing that struck me was just how empty the parking lot was in front of the Kendall Kmart. It was 6:00 on a weekday evening. Once inside, I noticed that two-thirds of the big box was closed off with temporary barriers. Luz DeLeon, who works the register, told me that new stores would be joining the shopping center to their left and right. The remaining store, which was once called Big Kmart, would soon be the size of a CVS drugstore. DeLeon says the Kmart has become something of a tourist attraction. “We have customers who drive down from Canada,” she tells me, “and want to stop by one of the last Kmarts.”
It is Store #3074, which is a throwback to a time when four-digit identifiers were needed to keep all the Kmarts straight. Because it opened its doors in 1977, it is the oldest of the three. Store #3438 opened five years later in Westwood, New Jersey, and it would be another 17 years before store #9423 in Bridgehampton, New York would open. Now they are all that is left.
Those same 50 states used to boast hundreds of the big-box stores, with their deep discounted prices and their “Blue Light Specials.” Kmart’s name used to be synonymous with bargain shopping. In the same way that you see Targets and Walmarts every few miles in suburbia, it used to be Kmart. In fact, more than three thousand of the stores have closed over the years in the 50 states. Large-population states such as California, Texas and Florida have seen the most closures.
Although Kmart is nearly off the continent, it is doing better in American territories. You may be surprised to learn that there are six on islands that are part of the US. Even though Hawaii no longer has a Kmart, there is one on the island of Guam. There is also one in Puerto Rico. The other four are in the US Virgin Islands.
