Towns recycle abandoned stores
— -- Wisconsin Rapids, one of Wisconsin's old paper-mill towns, had never fought to keep Wal-Marts and other big-box retailers out. Quite the opposite. The city was so welcoming that it got a state grant to meet Wal-Mart's parking needs in the 1980s.
By the late 1990s, however, Wal-Mart outgrew the space and moved to the outskirts of town. Downtown Wisconsin Rapids was left with a 120,000-square-foot shell and a giant parking lot. A neighboring shopping center suffered.
Today, the old Wal-Mart has new life as the Centralia Center for senior citizens. "Had we not (done so) … today it would still be sitting there blighted," says Mayor Mary Jo Carson.
America's big-box experience is entering a new phase.
Some towns continue to block megastores because they object to their economic impact on local merchants and the traffic congestion they can create. But thousands of other towns across the USA that welcomed them face a growing challenge: What to do with the cavernous spaces left behind by retailers such as Home Depot, Wal-Mart and Kmart when they downsize or expand elsewhere.
Big-box stores leave huge spaces behind — many carry deed restrictions that prevent other retailers from moving in — and filling the space can be difficult. So cities have become creative and some are turning these hubs of capitalism into centers of civic life.
A Kmart in Hastings, Neb., is a Head Start Early Childhood Center. Kmarts in Buffalo and Charlotte and a Wal-Mart in Laramie, Wyo., are charter schools. After Hurricane Katrina's devastation in Louisiana, the St. Bernard Health Center opened in government trailers in the parking lot of a closed Wal-Mart.
Among the most unusual uses: An old Kmart in Austin, Minn., is the site of Hormel Foods offices and a museum dedicated to Hormel's famed meat product, Spam; the Peddlers Mall in Nicholasville, Ky., is a flea market and antiques mall where a Wal-Mart once was.
Profting from abandoned spaces
Julia Christensen spent six years documenting the trend in Big Box Reuse, a book to be published in November. She details how 10 communities turned vacant big-box stores into schools, a courthouse, church, museum and other civic organizations. "We have a bunch of empty buildings all over the country," says Christensen, an artist who teaches at Oberlin College in Ohio.
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