Supercenters and Hypermarkets (in America)

I wanted to repost this so I could re-focus on things. I reordered things, updated, added.

Since Pseudo3D's Cities and Buildings is no longer primarily about SimCity (but will still have a big focus), I wanted to show
some progress on these, plus give a bit of history. In general, hypermarkets are a type of store originated from Europe that were a high-volume combination grocery store/department store that came stateside in the late 1980s. A number of major U.S. cities got one, with Philadelphia area getting Carrefour, Houston getting Auchan, Cincinnati getting bigg's (a unique situation in that it was an entirely new chain backed by French companies), and so on. Wal-Mart, then running only discount stores, wanted in, so they partnered with Tom Thumb stores (a Dallas grocery store chain) to make Hypermart USA. Kmart partnered with Bruno's (a southern upscale-leaning grocery store chain) to make American Fare.

But when the novelty ran off, the stores became big losses, and eventually started to disappear or give way to the Superstore concept, an American-created concept where the store was downscaled from 210,000+ square feet to about 150,000 square feet, and was basically a discount store with a supermarket department.

Carrefour closed, Auchan lived, bigg's started to adapt, Wal-Mart replaced Hypermart USA with Wal-Mart Supercenter, Kmart with Super Kmart, et cetera. Today, both bigg's and Auchan are completely gone, Super Kmart is just barely hanging on, Tom Thumb and Bruno's only exist "in name only", and Wal-Mart's Supercenters have conquered America (seriously).


1. Auchan
Auchan is based after a current French hypermarket. I've talked about Auchan in great length at Two Way Roads, my now-defunct blog, so all I can say is that Auchan came stateside in 1988 to build in west Houston with big plans, but never successful enough to make a big chain. A smaller Chicago store opened in 1989 and was shuttered a few years later, and eventually, a smaller Houston store opened in 2000. Unfortunately, the combined threat of primarily H-E-B and Wal-Mart Supercenter did both in a few years later.

I put Auchan first because I was actually working on a BAT. I restarted it from what you've seen previously, which is seen below.



What went wrong? Well, there were some areas that weren't straight, plus the photo was actually not sized correctly. I rebuilt it, so that's what's here. Also, I should note, this is the second smaller location built in 2000.

See my current thread at Simtropolis.



2. bigg's
bigg's (the "b" is lowercase) opened in 1984 as America's first true "hypermarket", offering both food and general merchandise (discounting the fact that just a few states north, Meijer had been doing that for years). It was a coalition between SuperValu (owning 10%) and French companies (90%). Unfortunately, bigg's made a few mistakes in its times of operation. In 1989, a third bigg's hypermarket opened in the Denver market and the first outside of Cincinnati. The store was doomed: Wal-Mart had just set foot in the market and boasted that it was all-American unlike the partially French-owned bigg's (which WAS the truth at the time, most of Wal-Mart's products were American-made). King Soopers, owned by Kroger, ran vicious pro-union attack ads on bigg's (and Kroger was also headquartered in Cincinnati...do the math). All during that time, Hyper Shoppes insisted on building new stores not as stand-alone stores but parts of small malls that were supposed to presumably expand. The only stores that were stand-alone were just supermarkets (diluting the hypermarket brand). By the time SuperValu bought the chain in 1994, they did build stand-alone full-line stores, but scaled back square footage and never went out of the Cincinnati area. By the year 2000, bigg's was no longer building any new "hypermarket" stores and by the year 2010, SuperValu pulled the plug and sold the remnants to another grocery store.


I actually have long intended to do bigg's, but here's all I have:

It's based in Florence, Kentucky (which closed last year)










3. Super Kmart Center
I'm not sure on how to correctly say it: is it "Super Kmart" or "Super Kmart Center" or "Kmart Super Center"? Ah well. The fact is, there's about two dozen of these left, but I had fond memories of one in Waco, Texas which opened in '94 and closed in 2003. Despite the glory days of Kmart being long gone and having sunk even further than my most recent Kmart trip in '09 (in Florida), Super Ks have a lot of nostalgia value and in many ways seemed a lot better than Supercenters. The product mix was great and comparable to real supermarkets, and they had the largest food supplier at the time -Fleming- behind them. But now, with Kmart involved in probably what is the worst merger since AOL Time Warner, I don't know about them.

I snagged this store directory from Flickr, which is from 1997 (the "golden days", I think, for Super Kmart). And I've always wanted a Super Kmart for SimCity 4. Bobbo662 did create one, but no copy has yet been found. Maybe one of these I'll create one.

The above picture comes from Kmart World.


4. Walmart (Supercenter)
Wal-Mart (Supercenters) get a lot of flack for cheap products, dirty stores, and gross people that frequent it. I'm not disputing that fact, and I don't really like Walmart Supercenters that much. They profoundly cut back the SKUs (distinct products) at the local Wal-Mart when it expanded, despite it being one of the largest Wal-Marts in the country. So instead of lots of merchandise, it's short shelves, small departments, and wide aisles. The cereal aisle wasn't as good as the one in Waco that I visited before this one expanded (I had visited it after my grandfather moved to another spot in Waco shortly after the Kmart closed), it just sucked. And thanks to the pitiful selection of SKUs, we went there less often, and as a result of that, didn't really get a chance to get the Walmart rotisserie chickens, which I DID like.

More on the local Walmart here. Seems like a prime opportunity though: there's only one Wal-Mart Supercenter on the STEX, and I think I can do better. They left off the Garden Center and they say that Wal-Mart Supercenter is based in Mexico. The original creator eventually created a new Walmart based on the current model, which is far better than the old BAT. This time I can only nitpick that the "Market & Pharmacy" and "Health & Living" signs are mixed up.

There's a lot of other things I dislike about Walmart, but I won't get into them here.

5. Meijer
Meijer I HAVE been to but regrettably don't know much about. The Wikipedia article is horrifically biased (but hopefully that will clear up). The stores, sadly, are rather dated: the first one I visited was quite a let-down: low ceilings, teal, and 90s fonts. The second one was admittedly better. However, there already IS a Meijer on the SketchUp, and I'd like to one-up it by making it larger, more detailed, and et cetera. There'll even be an aluminum can deposit station (a sad reality in Michigan). However, Meijer isn't quite a hypermarket, but really isn't a supercenter either since supercenters are primarily a discount store. It's more like a supermarket with a huge general merchandise selection.

6. The Other Ones
There are plenty others not mentioned here but haven't gotten around to them. Brief blurbs about them follow.

Fred Meyer: One of the first ones to have "one-stop shopping". Unfortunately, up until the 1980s or so had separate sections that had their own checkouts and walls. No relation to Meijer.

SuperTarget: Includes a bakery and fresh produce section, but like Wal-Mart Supercenter lacks a real meat department. Kind of rare nowadays in the growing selection of "normal" food (beyond chips, candy, and soda) and the "P-Fresh" format in normal Targets.

Leedmark: A 300k square foot store in Maryland in the early 1990s. Closed, now a supermarket and a Wal-Mart Supercenter.

Hypermart USA: A short-lived experiment by Wal-Mart and had less SKUs than possibly even today's Wal-Marts (a better product mix overall, though), they were larger, featuring more food stands than the typical McDonald's or Subway found today, and so forth. From what I've read (I have no interior pics), they were more of a hybrid Sam's Club and Wal-Mart, and had extremely odd merchandising options, such as only selling white paint. By 1990, they were renaming them "Wal-Mart's Hypermart USA", and killed them a few years later.

American Fare: As mentioned above, the Super Kmart proto. However, had a different merchandise mix than Kmart, focusing on upscale clothing brands.

Carrefour: Opened a massive store in Philadelphia in the late 1980s but closed in less than a decade. Opened a second store that was also short-lived, too.

There are others I didn't mention: Fred Meyer, SuperTarget, and the obscure (and long gone) Leedmark among them. I do intend on getting to regular grocery stores and discount stores, but that's for another article.

"The Ideal City"

Looks rather boring and too sterile, but an interesting artist's conception.

(via Strange Maps)

Rebuilt Roads

While I try to construct the BAT tutorial (looks I'll have to delay it another day) and the Auchan project (someone leave some feedback at the Simtropolis thread, please, I wanted to show some really interesting rebuilds, often in terms of highways and roads, and occasionally, abandoned railroads.

Orange Bus Line: Los Angeles, California

One of the many odd things about LA is the abundance of wide abandoned railroad right of ways, often even leaving track in (more on that later). But on rare occasions, they actually do something with it. Here we have a abandoned right of way converted to a BRT. BRT stands for Bus Rapid Transit. There's none of it in SimCity, but basically imagine a road that's only for buses. You can clearly see that it says for cars to keep clear of that intersection (much like railroad tracks). I was a bit disappointed though in the fact that it still looks like the buses may have to stop. Heck, if I were a BRT planner, buses would only stop at stations. Mandatory red lights for ALL at-grade intersections when a bus is coming through! They ain't stopping for NOBODY!


Before

After

Also, did some digging, this was the Burbank Branch, abandoned in 1991.

Manchester Road: Des Peres, Missouri
Here we have an intersection found just about everywhere where there's Interstate or Interstate-like highways: a crossing road, two exits (sometimes may be connected to a frontage roads), exit highway, turn left, turn right, go straight, get on highway: very straight-forward. But around 2001 or so, this intersection did a dramatic rebuilding. First off, interestingly enough, the mall just to the east of this did a rebuild by demolishing the old mall and building a new one. The road, however, had several interesting adjustments. It split in two, building a new three-lane road to the north for westbound traffic, and reconfiguring the five lanes (two west, two east, turning lane) for a new traffic flow. See if you can figure this out.



Before

There is no good picture that shows all of the intersection clearly. Best try for a direct direct link
After


290 Leftovers: Hockley, Texas
When US-290 bypassed the towns of Hempstead, Waller, and Hockley in the mid-to-late 1990s, it created some very odd "leftovers".
First up is the Bauer-Hockley/Grimes division. The abnormally sharp curve was created for these two rural roads when 290 bisected it, but what's strange is three factors.



Before




After

1. There's a wooden bridge on the road heading northwest. A wooden bridge. Awesome. It's rare for a public road nowadays.
2. The road was bisected during construction, so there's a Bauer-Hockley Road to the east which used to connect with the Bauer-Hockley Road to the west. But Bauer-Hockley extends southward (westward, with the wooden bridge, is Grimes). I should mention though that especially in Texas rural areas (and even today), it's not uncommon to turn right or left to stay on the same "road" traveling. Traveling south on nearby Katy Hockley Road has the same "features".
3. Possibly as a leftover of the intersection days, you stop if you're going to turn left on the curve, but not turning right. Guess that's safer.

There's also, in that same area, a little paved cul-de-sac that goes nowhere and has no driveways. Property lines suggest that it was originally to be served as the frontage road terminus (and possibly might have!), but it serves nothing of the sort today.

Both of these are endangered roads, because there's plans to build the Hempstead Tollway possibly to that point in the future (but I don't have a link).

Continuous flow intersection: Baton Rouge, Louisiana
A rare, relatively new intersection, so few that there are only 11 in the United States. Now, technically, the B.R. intersection, which I have personally driven through (not driven past, like Hempstead, or seen on GE only, like our first two examples).

The images from Google Earth are twisted 90°


Before



After
However, the CFI in Baton Rouge is a bit different than a normal CFI on two conditions.

1. The CFI is only for the northbound and southbound lanes of the "bigger road", Airline Highway.
2. A frontage road was added for some businesses that used to plug directly into Airline (Airline is NOT limited-access)

I seem to remember that in 2008, it was a bit difficult to maneuver this one, we were heading back from a Christmas party as it were, our car was beating the other car home, but we got side-tracked and got in a less-advantegous lane (frontage or main, I don't remember), and allowed the other car to beat us home. All the while we were trying to avoid a lunatic that honked a split second after an intersection light turned green (but before cars could accelerate). Said lunatic also had a car with a bowling ball sized dent on top of the car.

The intersection was reconstructed in 2005 and opened in early 2006.

Katy Freeway: Houston, Texas
Katy Freeway is another awesome "rebuild". How do you take a congested freeway and transform it into one of the widest freeways in America, with 26 lanes, whether they be frontage roads, HOV, toll, etc.? Use what you've got!

You see, Katy Freeway (which leads out to Katy, Texas), paralleled the Katy railroad (the M-K-T, as it were). By 1996, the Katy Freeway was an overcrowded, dated mess that hadn't been updated in decades, while the Katy railroad was a dilapidated disaster waiting to happen. In 1997, another merger happened, and the tracks were dismantled.

This left a very wide right-of-way, plus, in some parts, a now-redundant frontage road that was used for accessing businesses. Several years later, the expansion began. Regrettably, I couldn't get a good shot of both the widest freeway part and the redundant lane part, and everything has changed so dramatically along the route it's hard to really get a feel for things anyway.

For example, the shot below does not have the "extra frontage road" and the buildings have changed. The building to the north was an IKEA (before they built a new one), and the building to the south was a hotel that has since been demolished.




Before




After
While some homes and aforementioned hotel were demolished for the expansion, the majority of homes and businesses were saved.

I recommend scouting around the area on Google Earth and playing with the time slider.

No doubt all of these created agonizing construction zones and demolished roads. Even the BRT surely must have required something as the railroad was stripped, patched, and repaved.

But in SimCity, there is no construction zones. Want a better interchange? Simple: pause and demolish it. One minute it's there, next minute gone. Poof. There is no trace of railroads. Railroad needs to disappear? Click click! The roads are spotless.

The First Real Post

During the time this blog had shut down, I made a number of posts that would better fit over here:

Houston Curiosities (Gone)
Of damaged bridges and abandoned railroad signals. Posted April 7.

Interstate Gap in New Joisey
When is the Interstate just a regular road? New Jersey, of course! Posted February 22.

Cool city plans
Thought processes. Posted February 15.

Anyway, in terms of SketchUp/BAT, I found a non-skyscraper building made with SketchUp: Tina's Food & Drug. The link is currently down, but it's based after the author's local stores, Safeway and Albertsons, so it's almost more than likely Tina's is quite overpriced in comparison with the other grocery stores and kind of dirty. Best try for a good Kroger or its brands.

And speaking of Kroger, I had passed by this specimen on a vacation to Ann Arbor, Michigan. It's an old Superstore location, and likely had very few remodels in that time.


More information on this type of Kroger can be found on Pleasant Family Shopping

In the meantime, I'll try to do a complete reorganization of this site, removing some posts, reorganizing, et cetera.