As you may have read previously, we have a contest going on here at the blog. Click here for the contest rules The Louisiana and Texas Retail Blogspot: Retail giveaway update and September 2021 blog update, ending the blog (southernretail.blogspot.com) The contest so far has only received a small amount of entries and ends December 1st. Lots of retail goodies are up for grabs from my personal collection as a thank you for supporting the blog.
Unfortunately I was unable to revisit this store after the surprise announcement of the entire Fry's chain going out of business on February 23, 2021. Fry's was a chain that I had overlooked on the blog for a while even though I visited their stores frequently up until around 2019. With the rapid decline of their stores becoming more and more obvious, it was time to finally document these stores in late 2019. Fry's lasted a little more than a year after I documented the Houston area stores.
I made it in time to document the store just before the signage was taken down. If you want to see the store back in late 2019 click here for my store tour.
Here are the views of the closed up store. As you can see the employees were moving items into a rental truck. If you were an employee of Fry's when the store closed, please share your experience. I am not sure if this store had a fixture sale like the other two locations, but the store was completely vacated while the other 2 locations were having their fixture sales.
This was the first Fry's location I visited back in 2000. It was very sad to see the decline of this store.
I wonder if anyone was left to install car stereos prior to Fry's shutting down. They had next to nothing left towards the end.
The faded sign is still up, even months later. If it hasn't blown down yet.
A month later the signage had been taken down. Some of the ceiling panels have fallen or were removed when the sign was taken down. Those same panels except for one fallen panel were still sitting there a couple of months ago.
The other 2 Fry's locations had tarps placed over the signage and still hasn't been taken down as of November 2021. The NASA Fry's roads are completely blocked off by fencing. You will see more of the NASA Fry's location here in the future, video and photos.
I drove by this ex-Fry's just today actually and so I can confirm that the "Your Best Buys Are Always at Fry's" banner is still up and facing I-45. Otherwise, as you say, the signage has been completely removed from this location and there is also a banner from the property management company advertising the space as being available.
ReplyDeleteI remember attending the grand opening sale for this store in 2000 and being just blown away by the design of the store, how much the sold, and the prices. What an experience that was! This store really left an impression. While the NASA Fry's was also impressive, it opened a bit after this store so it wasn't quite a surprise and I think the NASA store might have been marginally smaller as well.
Although I shopped at the NASA store a bit more frequently than this one in recent times, almost all my Fry's visits during their first decade in Houston was at the Greenspoint area store. So, yeah, I had a strong connection to this location. It's a shame it's gone! Fortunately, I was able to visit it not long before it closed even if the store was far from it's former glory at that point.
In other retail news, I was recently at North Oaks Mall and I can confirm that the now old news that the theater closed. It was dark so it was hard to see inside the mall corridor leading to the old theater, but it appears the MacFrugal's signage above the long-unused Big Lots mall entrance was removed at some point. That's a shame, that MacFrugal's sign was a great throwback. Anyway, with TJMaxx and the theater now closed, the shopping center feels a lot less busy than it used to a few years ago. I guess it's still doing okay though, but most of the traffic at the center is now clustered around the center part with the Big Lots, Ross, and Half Price Books. It's not dense throughout the center like it once was.
I also visited the Texas Thrift in the old FM 1960 & Kuykendahl Kmart here recently. It certainly has a Kmart feel to it with the low ceiling, strip lights, and the classic Kmart HVAC vents. The thrift seemed to have a lot of clothing, but the electronics selection there is a total dud. Literally all they had were a couple of old CRT TVs and a fax machine! They did have a decent amount of CDs though if nothing else, but I don't think I saw any video or audio cassettes. So, yeah, it might not be worth a visit from the thrifting perspective, but it might be worth a visit to see the classic Kmart HVAC vents and such. It had been a while since I had seen one of those in-person.
I am certainly glad that I documented these stores when I did. I thought Fry's had a bit more time and would not fold until late 2021. It sounds like Fry's ownership already knew the chain was going down. It was a slow liquidation similar to Sears. With the amount of inventory the stores had when they closed, I would have to say 75% of the stores were empty by then. The inventory at NASA which was easily visible on my first visit was very low. There wasn't even enough to fill all of their shopping carts. I bet the losses were beginning to mount as early as 2018. Even in the darker NASA location, the light bill had to be huge for those places. Their half-hearted attempts to add more product lines were just weird. Huge aisles of perfumes, the Covid-19 aisle, pet supplies, and several others I am missing.
DeleteI had a weird experience a few weeks back at North Oaks when I was going to get some photos of the closed off corridor. A guy asked me for money and started to get aggressive with me when I told him no. Nothing physical, but I am not one to hold my tongue when someone begins cursing at me. After that, I decided to leave the shopping center after making my stop at Half Price Books. Usually these kind of encounters are expected in dense downtown areas, but not in a suburban shopping center. Pretty much the whole East side of the shopping center seems to have emptied out.
I keep driving by that thrift after hours, I need to go back one of these days while they are open. I could actually use a small CRT TV, my last one was "accidentally" thrown out while I was at work.
I did make it to the Sears Hometown store in Pasadena to provide a sort of happy ending update to the Sears location there. Of course, I had to buy a small tool set to support them. They have a few items there that I will buy in the future such as a refrigerator water filter. I did take a nice self-tour around the store, maybe a little bit into the empty section that HHR was able to see. I also have a surprise post that I will add in the near future.
When I visited the NASA Fry's in late January 2021, the place really did have the feel of a place that wasn't going to be around for much longer. The thought did cross my mind when I was there that there was a decent chance that would be my last visit to Fry's so I did try to take things in. Granted, they had just moved some stuff around and closed half the store so I thought they'd last for a few months longer than they did. Still, they had sale signs up that expired months prior and the store was desolate. The inventory of electronics was pathetic, but they did have that impressive aisle of pandemic goods and other oddball stuff that didn't really fit into what the store was supposed to be. They did have an impressive amount of blank media, which was why I went there in the first place, but otherwise there really wasn't much there to buy.
DeleteI'm glad you were able to document the Fry's stores and that you were able to get into a few of the not-so-well documented liquidation sales. I think these are stores that retail enthusiasts will be talking about for years to come so it's good that there is photographic evidence of how neat these stores were.
I'm glad you were able to make it to the Pasadena Sears Hometown. It must have felt strange buying something from Sears once again in the Houston area! Just being able to roam around in some of the closed parts of the store again must have been surreal. I'm sure the employees appreciated the purchase. I'm hoping to make it down to the Pasadena Sears here before Christmas. I was looking at the Sears Hometown jobs page and they had at least two postings for different jobs at Willowbrook. I'm guessing they are planning on putting a Hometown store in the Willowbrook area, but it's still undetermined if that will be at the old mall location or not. I hope the store opens before Christmas if it does open, but we'll see.
I've seen panhandlers at North Oaks Mall before, but that was before the pandemic. I didn't see any when I was there recently, but I can't say I'm surprised to hear about the run-in you had. It seems that security might be a bit lacking at North Oaks at the moment which is a bit surprising given the family nature of many of the remaining stores there. The center is getting a bit of a dying mall feel to it even though the parts between Hobby Lobby and Big Lots are still doing well. If the center can get someone like Ollie's in at the east side of the center, the place would look a lot better. That said, I don't know if Big Lots would be happy with having an Ollie's in the same shopping center. It's hard to say who else could move into there because all the other logical options already have locations nearby on FM 1960.
Lol, I guess I'm not surprised that your CRT TV got 'accidentally' thrown away. The Texas Thrift might be a good place to pick up a new one. I was at a Goodwill recently and was surprised to see they had a small CRT TV for sale because I thought they stopped selling those a while back. I took a close look at it and it appeared to have a logo on it indicating that it has a digital TV tuner. That must have been one of the last CRT TVs made if it has a digital tuner. It must have been made around 2007-9. I'm surprised Goodwill even realized that it had a digital tuner which I guess is their standard for TVs they sell. It certainly would have been understandable if someone would have assumed that TV was from the 1990s.
I'm looking forward to seeing the surprise post! I'm sure it'll be good.
The one Fry's store I really wanted to see was the store in Austin. They had the musical theme with lots of neon from what I have seen online. It was so strange that the stores just up and closed overnight, I can't think of any other retail company where that happened.
DeleteI hope they have more advertising for the Hometown store in Pasadena. They had some small signs in front of the store but nothing on the roads that people driving by could see. They need to do a lot more to get people back to shop there, even at night most of the lights were off. I hope that the Willowbrook location fills something besides the old mall location. I really think the large mall locations need to be redeveloped into something new. Adding a small store inside of these huge buildings just doesn't make sense and will make redevelopment more challenging.
There was a security guard that entered the old mall corridor as I was driving up to North Oaks. If they lose another big box store, it will be devastating to the center. It seems close to the tipping point.
I have pretty much mothballed my old video games and have been thinking about selling off my remaining stuff. The older systems have gone up in value and I don't have a lot of time for any games these days. The Switch has a lot of games as it is to keep me busy. I have been able to find most of the games on the Switch or mini-consoles that have come out in recent years.
I’ve heard that Sears is going to open a Hometown store in the Willowbrook area in January. I wonder if they are going to open in the old mall location, or somewhere in one of the shopping centers.
ReplyDeleteWe will have to wait and see. A lot of old Sears department stores have reopened as Hometown stores recently.
DeleteI sent in a contest entry! I totally missed the post about it... I missed a lot in September. I'm in Houma and we were devastated by Hurricane Ida. Our internet was out for 5 weeks.
ReplyDeleteI have received your contest entry. Did your residence fare well during the storm? That Hurricane must have been a very scary thing to go through.
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