This building was originally built in 1968 (I have no idea what it was at that time, but the back of the building looks fairly warehouse-like, so it may not have always been retail), and the Toys R Us here appears to have opened in the 90s (originally having a Concept 2000-esque facade), was remodeled to have Babies R Us as a separate space in 2007, and appears to have closed in 2017 or 2018, which would put it as one of the first stores closed as part of their bankruptcy. Since then, it seems to have been a Spirit Halloween location fairly consistently, starting in 2018 and still being used as such today (I suspect the property owner has been using them as a convenient way to earn a little income without having to sign a long-term lease, while planning to redevelop the site with a much larger building to match the buildings you can see in the background).
Given that this store opened in the 1990s, I wonder if the Babies R Us was originally a Kids R Us clothing store. Maybe not.
ReplyDeleteIt's a bit surprising that the Toys/Babies R Us signs are still up! Given TRU's aggressive legal team, as we've seen in Houston, I wonder for how long that will continue.
Around here in Texas, many old TRUs are becoming Ollie's closeout stores. The second Ollie's to open in the Houston area opened recently and it is inside an old standalone Babies R Us store. Je at the Louisiana & Texas Retail Blog visited a couple of these TRU Ollie's since they keep a lot of the TRU look. Here is an Ollie's in an older TRU. It's interesting that they put the Ollie's head logo where Geoffrey's head used to be on the exterior entrance sign! Link: https://southernretail.blogspot.com/2021/10/ollies-inside-of-former-toys-r-us-waco.html
Within that blog post is Je's photos of how that TRU looked before TRU went out of business. That location looked right out of the 1980s still! Amazing! It's worth checking that out. Link: https://southernretail.blogspot.com/2015/06/retro-toys-r-us-waco-tx.html
From that picture I linked above, it looks like this was originally all one big store, but I'm guessing the smaller sign was for Kids R Us!
DeleteOllie's really seems to be all over the place down there! That looks like it was quite a cool store back in the Toys R Us era -- really reminds me of the London Drugs stores I visited in Vancouver!