June 23, 2012

Spotlight: Kmart - Lake Park, FL

1220 Northlake Blvd Lake Park, FL 33403
Today we are spotlighting a Kmart that was visited by one of our anonymous guest contributors. This Kmart located in Lake Park, FL and opened on August 15, 1974. The store is doing fairly well and has even received a decent looking remodel in the past couple of years. Interestingly there is a Target complete with the new P-Fresh grocery section right next door to this Kmart.

Bright colored walls help make the store look bigger.
 This Kmart was remodeled with multicolored walls and the black (or brown) and orange concept departmental signs. They added a Sears Auto Center and a drink station at the front of the store with ICEE's. The store also has an Olan Mills portrait studio and a Pharmacy, but no K Cafe. Of course with most Kmart remodels obvious details have been overlooked like the old, nasty ceiling tiles, outdated video game cases, and the ancient milk coolers. Overall it was a nice looking remodel, but not as nice as the ones they have done most recently. If Sears Holdings would spend just a little more on each store's remodel it would make a big difference, but alas that's how Eddie Lampert manages the company.

Look at that nasty ceiling, why not fix that?
In the pantry department, it's set up a bit differently than most Kmart's. The aisles are broken in half so that it makes two short aisles as apposed to one long run. In turn that makes it a little more shopper friendly.

Panty aisle signs.
Now going back to the Target next door. Upon checking it out, it was a cluttered and cramped but clean store. The parking lot is a bit cumbersome to navigate and is not very easy to access from the highway. Possibly because of that the store was very empty upon visiting and is probably a good reason the Kmart is still making it. Kmart had a good amount of foot traffic and has multiple entrances to the complex. The Target is by itself and the Kmart is in with a busy shopping center.

Map showing how close Kmart is to Target
And so that covers the Lake Park Kmart. What do you think of the remodel of this store? Do you think it'll continue to survive next to Target? Leave you comments below and enjoy the rest of the pictures.




































17 comments:

  1. Sure is colorful! Man, too bad about the K-Cafés, but it IS Floridian. Time for a vacation! :)

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  2. What a very colorful store. I personally think that even if the company made improvements to every store like this, they wouldn't be doing as bad as they are!

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    1. I'm not sure what kind of improvement they would make in revenue but at least you'd get rid of the "ugh, they're all dirty dingy disgusting stores" conception that many people have.

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  3. The outside exterior looks great except for the doors as they don't match the exterior, but other than that I'm wowed by the exterior. The Kmart logo looks great and goes well with the exterior. From what I see in the pictures, the inside of the store looks clean and well organized. This is great and a gives a great first impression of a clean and well organized store as well as enhancing the customers shopping experience. The checkstands look great and are up to the times as well. the painting and decorating of the walls looks good, and the letters/words on them are up to the times and they look great. From what I see is that the restrooms got remodeled and the tile work is great, thus further enhancing the customer's shopping experience. The perishables food refigerator section looks great. The round tubular ceiling vents look great and all that's needed is to change the ceiling tiles and put different ceiling lights as into to bring the store to the 21st century and make the inside look different from before as some retailers have done with their old stores when real estate is limited on to building another store. Other than that everything else looks good and I would shop at this Kmart over Target in Lake Park and tell others to do the same as Kmart does truly stand out from Target and Wal-Mart. It's just that Eddie Lampert needs to bring in an executive to Sears Holdings Inc that's a veteran in retail and knows exactly what they're doing. Once again, I'm very impressed with this being a real clean and organized Kmart store and makes a real big difference on customer visits, volume, and revenue.

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  4. Hi everyone. I am the anonymous source. I am an SHC corporate employee. We have more post coming. I am also photographing the Parsippany, NJ KMart that was recently converted back to a kmart from sears essentials. IF you wish, please contact me at my_kmart(@)yahoo.com

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  5. Why is it some Kmarts are getting this orange blue and white remodel, and some are getting the red white and black remodel?

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    1. Because they were remodeled at different times. All current remodels are going to look like the Kmart in the Marietta Sears to Kmart post from last month. Every year or so they change the style of the remodels they do for stores, because they can't decide on a look they want for Kmart.

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  6. Yes the original started with Orange/Blue/Brown/Green/Yellow/Purple(dependent on region) Followed by Orange/Tan/Brown. Now it is white with red signage.

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  7. The best thing about this store is that it doesn't have that 1990s facade that all the Big Kmarts had.

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  8. nice post! :) Surprised the Kmart is surviving next to Target. Is the area very urban / heavily populated?
    Was in a Silver Spring MD Kmart that was almost pseudo-remodeled in the past few years (new exterior signage, but not as nice as this store as can still tell it was the old-school facade) but the inside still feels like a 1970's Kmart... will post next week http://superkmart.blogspot.com/

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  9. Yes this is in Lake Park, Fl. VERY urban area and heavy population. Store is on a very busy corner with a bus pick-up/drop off

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  10. There will be a press release regarding this location some time this fiscal year.

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  11. Restrooms look somewhat different than the remodels I've seen. Usually darker colored decorator tiles (slate?), and sadly ends up where the restrooms look better than the rest of the store does!

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  12. The store up near Wilkes-Barre, PA (Edwardsville) was flooded in last year's tropical storms and had to be completely gutted and redone. Supposed to reopen sometime in August. Since they pretty much couldn't recycle anything it'd be interesting to see what the store will look like since it'll essentially be "brand new" inside.

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  13. How many customers a day does K-Mart receive nationwide or per store on average?

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  14. I would like to see presented the entire plaza and this particular store with their employees and regular clientele and then tell me how many of you would be comfortable shopping there. I live in the area and I have been here once, and never returned.

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  15. When I arrived to this area in early September 2012, I immediately went to this particular KMart to satisfy my nostalgia. The store impressed me by being reasonably afloat, vs another beaten-down one in Durham, NC, where I used to bargain-shop for toddler toys and household items frequently.

    Now, almost exactly 3 years later (end of Sep'15), the store, that looked comparably good back in a day, has a going out of business sale.

    Approximately a month ago or so, when I went here for the last but one time, I noticed murky rainwater dripping through the roof into plastic buckets on the floor in sport goods department. I knew the writing is on the wall - few months after that scene happened in my favourite Durham store they announced closing.

    I miss America of hard work, "made in USA", good life and printed Sears catalogs, that I unfortunately never witnessed with my own eyes... And I am not vulture-shopping this closeout (last day November 8th 2015, or so, sad employees told me), just too disheartening for me personally. I was coming there for nostalgic atmosphere of 70s and 80s of this, once overwhelmingly amazing, country.

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