Kmart – West Long Branch, New Jersey

Check this out... a Kmart that isn't closing! I've driven by this place a million times but never stopped in to take a look. One evening this past summer, I was sitting in bumper to bumper traffic on Route 36 and decided to pull in the entrance and have a look Turned out to be one of the most bizarre shopping experiences I've ever had. The store was completely dead. I was just about the only person in the whole place. No shoppers and no employees. Judging from satellite images, the store still seems to attract a decent amount of customers. Perhaps they come on the weekends. 

Big Kmart sign looking pretty weathered these days. 

The store is big and bright. Surprisingly clean and well stocked from one end to the other. That's not to say it doesn't feel painfully outdated.

One of the things that drives me crazy about Kmart these days, is the complete lack of consistency with their store signage. Here we have a mix of the orange and brown signage with newer signage in the clothing departments with some completely random signs in other areas. 

Books! Tons of seasonal merchandise remaining on shelves in late August. For a company that isn't doing well, they are pouring money into inventory that is not moving off of shelves. 

The garden department straight ahead.

Looking along the back of the store. Gotta give this place crops for not having a single burned out light bulb!

Literally not one single shopper along the entire rear of the store. Can't remember the last thing I was in a store this huge without another human being in site. 

Always fun to check out Kmart's mishmash floors. So common in Kmarts for the original tile patterns  to no longer make any sense with their current layouts.

Hello? Anyone here?

Fitting Room signage remains from the early 90's remodel. 

Not all the signage got updated in clothing. 

Former spot of the kcafé. Not sure if the café was added in the early 90's or during the the Big Kmart conversion. 

Enticing mattress department.

Another odd-ball sign for Home Furnishings. Looks like the amount of registers were reduced to make space for this department. 

The front-end looks pretty good! And there's a shopper!! 

It appears there is a single line for the checkouts. The only explanation I could fine for the wall of snack cakes. I left without buying anything. Would have left a lot sooner if I wasn't taking pictures of the joint. 

The Big Kmart era Customer Service desk with the accompanying giant monitor long gone.

Like with any Kmart these days, you have to wonder.... how much longer before the "Store Closing" signs go up?

Massive parking lot. 

Found this area to be very curious. Clearly a former grocery store, looking like a smaller version of some Acmes we've seen paired up with Kmart. Did a little digging on flickr for more information and discovered this from catnapped retail central...
"...found that this originated as an A&P WEO location. Spent some time as a garden supply store then as a grocery chain called Rex-Gene from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s. The chain's locations were acquired by NY-based Western Beef but apparently this location was never reopened."

Auto Service long gone. 

Deluxe Garden Center to the rear with an unaltered 90's Kmart sign to boot! 

Former West Long Branch Acme just down Route 36. 

A decent crowd in this image. The lack of nearby competition from Target and Walmart may help this place to remain successful. 

Res-Gene drawing decent crowds back in 1995.