Old Walmarts
Old Walmarts
What Do You Think You're Looking At? #133
Does this Walmart in Clinton, New Jersey look unusual to you?
It definitely doesn’t look like a standard Walmart building, either an old or new one. That’s because it’s one of relatively few Walmart stores which occupy pre-existing structures.
In this case, you’re looking at an old Laneco store from the 1970s!
Laneco was an early regional (Pennsylvania and New Jersey) discount department store, from the 1960s. Some of their stores had supermarkets too, making them early supercenters! Some were supermarkets only; this shopping center is on an incline, with two levels, and the anchor store on the upper level used to be a Laneco supermarket (now it’s a ShopRite).
This Walmart was converted in the late 1990s, a few years before Laneco went bankrupt. Other than the sign and the paint job, it pretty much looks identical. The interior is small, with a low drop ceiling and old-school fluorescent lights. They pulled up the old tile floors a few years ago, but even those were intact for 20ish years. Here it is, back in 2021 when I last visited:
Here’s the outside area close up:
There’s no big garden center here, or supermarket section. It’s one of the few remaining Walmart stores that isn’t a Supercenter. It’s really pretty unusual for Walmart. But there’s a Supercenter in Flemington, and in Phillipsburg, both pretty close to Clinton, so the regional market probably couldn’t support another one. There’s no Target close by, so a smaller Walmart in the middle works, I guess. There even used to be another former-Laneco Walmart in also-nearby Whitehouse Station/Branchburg. That one closed—it’s now a marijuana growing facility, of all things.
Here’s what this Walmart looked like with the previous Walmart logo and the old color scheme, which I prefer. Plus, the old McDonald’s branding! I like these smaller discount department stores. The drop ceilings make them feel cozy. The Supercenters are so cavernous that they lose some of the basic convenience of the Walmart model.
I hope this oddball location, outside a lovely little New Jersey town, sticks around.
Related Reading:
Roses Are Red, Walmarts Are Blue
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