In a suburban Miami shopping center, Kmart's last 'Blue Light Specials' flicker

MIAMI (AP) — The last Kmart on the U.S. mainland sits at the west end of a busy suburban Miami shopping center, quiet and largely ignored.

All around it are thriving chain stores attracting steady streams of customers in sectors where the former box-store chain was once a major player: Marshalls, Hobby Lobby, PetSmart and Dollar Tree.

But at this all-but-last outpost of a company once famed for its “Blue Light Specials," only an occasional shopper pops in, mostly out of curiosity or nostalgia, then leaves after buying little or nothing.

"I hadn’t seen Kmart in so long,” said Juan de la Madriz, who came to the shopping center on a recent weekday to buy dog food at PetSmart. The architect spotted the Kmart and wondered if he could find a gift for his newborn grandson. He exited 10 minutes later having spent $23 on a stuffed dog and a wooden toy workbench.

“It will be sad if it closes,” he said about the store, “but everything now is on computers.”

The last full-size Kmart in the 50 states closed Sunday in Long Island, New York, making the Miami store — now a fraction of its former size — the last operating in the continental U.S. At its peak 30 years ago, Kmart operated about 2,500 locations. Today, four others remain: three in the U.S. Virgin Islands and one in Guam. There is also a website.

Transformco, the Illinois-based holding company that owns Kmart and what’s left of another former retail behemoth, Sears, did not respond to email requests for comment or allow the store manager to speak. The company's plans for the Miami location are unknown — but there is no indication it will close soon.

If the Miami Kmart were a brand new mom-and-pop retailer, a shopper might think it could eventually thrive with advertising and a little luck. Kmarts long had a reputation for clutter and mess, but this store is immaculate and the merchandise is precisely stacked and displayed.

The size of a CVS or Walgreens drug store, the branch occupies what was its garden section during its big-box days. A couple years ago, an At Home department store took over the rest of the space.

“Get it all! Must Haves. Wish Fors. Friendly Faces,” the sign next to the door reads.

Halloween and Christmas decorations line the entryway, next to the 30 shopping carts that no one is using. A robotic voice says “Welcome,” as does a cheery employee, one of three spotted in the store. A lone customer checks out the Halloween candy.

Straight ahead are a few dishwashers, refrigerators, washing machines and dryers: the appliance department. In the store’s main room, there is a large section of toiletries and diapers, a few hardware essentials and some cleaning and pet supplies. The toy department comprises a couple rows of dolls, action figures, games and squirt guns. Sun dresses, summer tops and sweatshirts make up the small clothing section. Oh, and there are snacks.

Also still present: a recorded voice intoning a once-familiar message over a loudspeaker.

“Attention Kmart shoppers,” it says, announcing that almost all items are on sale.

If there were only customers to hear it, like there used to be.

Kmart was founded by the retailer S.S. Kresge Co. in Michigan in 1962 and grew quickly, reaching 2,000 stores in 20 years. The company sold almost everything, from clothing to jewelry, TVs to dog food, appliances to toys to sporting goods. By the mid-1980s, it was the nation's second-largest retailer behind Sears, and there were stores in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The roots of Kmart's decline were laid during that decade when management bought Waldenbooks, Borders Books, Builders Square, The Sports Authority and a stake in OfficeMax, thinking the company needed diversification. They were wrong. By the late 1990s, the company had sold those retailers yet still needed $5 billion in refinancing — the equivalent of $9 billion today.

In 2002, Kmart declared bankruptcy as Walmart and Target devoured its market share. Its website never took off, allowing Amazon to beat it in the e-commerce space. There were executive pay scandals, a purchase by a hedge fund manager who stripped it bare and a disastrous 2005 acquisition of Sears.

Mark Cohen, a former Sears Canada CEO and former director of retail studies at Columbia University’s graduate school of business, said Kmart would have thrived if not for the top executives who ran it into the ground. It could have been Walmart.

“It sold in its heyday things that people continue to buy in large quantities today,” Cohen said. “Kmart went down the drain because it was led by incompetent managers.”

Transformco bought Kmart and Sears out of another bankruptcy in 2019 for $5 billion — its critics say mostly for the stores' real estate. There were 202 Kmarts remaining.

Over the past five years, the firm has kept closing Kmarts until all that's left in the states is Miami Store #3074.

On the day that de la Madriz dropped in to buy his grandson's gift, only a few customers trickled in and out of the store every hour.

College students Joey Fernandez and Wilfredo Huayhua spent five minutes inside before leaving empty-handed. They knew about the chain’s near-demise, spotted the store while in the shopping center and went in to reminisce. It seemed small, they said, compared to the Kmarts they remembered.

“We were bummed out — I spent a lot of my childhood at Kmart,” said Fernandez, 18. Still, he might be back — the store has good prices on the facial cleanser he uses.

Teacher Oliver Sequin had been entering Marshalls when he spotted the Kmart. That too triggered nostalgia, but also reminded him he needed Band-Aids for his 5-year-old son. That was all he purchased.

“I remember when Kmarts were bigger,” Sequin said. “But, to be honest, I like this one better. It is clean and organized, not like they were.”

Juan de la Madriz exits the only Kmart store left in the continental United States with toys for his newborn grandson, Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024, in Miami. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)

FILE - Shoppers look for groceries at a Kmart store in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., on Nov. 21, 2001. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)

FILE - Shoppers rush into a Kmart store in Chicago on on Nov. 25, 2011 for Black Friday sale. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)

FILE - Shoppers wait outside a Kmart store for a 7 a.m. Thanksgiving Day sale in Nashville, Tenn., on Nov. 23, 2006. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File)

FILE - Kmart shoppers enter and leave the first Kmart ever built in Garden City, Mich., store, on Nov. 12, 1993. (AP Photo/Richard Sheinwald)

FILE - Kmart shoppers mill around the flashing blue light, sign of the "Blue Light Special," at the first Kmart ever built in Garden City, Mich., on March 1, 1982. (AP Photo/Dale Young, File)

A customer exits the only Kmart store left in the continental United States, Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024, in Miami. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)

Customers leave from the only Kmart store left in the continental United States, Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024, in Miami. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)

BEIRUT (AP) — An Israeli airstrike on a compound housing journalists in southeast Lebanon has killed three media staffers, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said Friday.

Local news station Al Jadeed aired footage from the scene — a collection of chalets that had been rented by various media outlets — showing collapsed buildings and cars marked PRESS covered in dust and rubble. The Israeli army did not issue a warning prior to the strike.

The Beirut-based pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV said two of its staffers — camera operator Ghassan Najar and broadcast technician Mohammed Rida — were among the journalists killed early Friday. Al-Manar TV of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group said its camera operator Wissam Qassim was also killed in the airstrike on the Hasbaya region.

Ali Shoeib, Al-Manar’s well-known correspondent in south Lebanon, was seen in a video filming himself with a cellphone saying that the camera operator who had been working with him for months was killed. Shoeib said the Israeli military knew that the area that was struck and had several chalets was home to journalists of different media organizations.

“We were reporting the news and showing the suffering of the victims and now we are the news and the victims of Israel’s crimes,” Shoeib added in the video aired on Al-Manar TV.

The Hasbaya region has been spared much of the violence along the border and many of the journalists now staying there have moved from the nearby town of Marjayoun that has been subjected to sporadic strikes in recent weeks. Earlier in the week, a strike hit an office belonging to Al-Mayadeen on the outskirts of Beirut’s southern suburbs, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.

Several journalists have been killed since exchange of fire began along the Lebanon-Israel border in early October last year.

In November 2023, two journalists for Al-Mayadeen TV were killed in a drone strike. A month earlier, Israeli shelling in southern Lebanon killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and wounded other journalists from France’s international news agency, Agence France-Presse, and Qatar’s Al-Jazeera TV.

Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were combatants but says women and children make up more than half the fatalities. The Israeli military says it has killed over 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.

The Israeli campaign has since expanded to Lebanon, where Israel launched a ground invasion Oct. 1, after trading fire with the Hezbollah militant group for much of the past year.

Lebanese health officials reported another day of intense airstrikes and shelling Thursday, which they said killed 19 people over 24 hours and raised the overall Lebanese death toll to 2,593 since October 2023.

Smoke rises from an Israeli airstrike on Mansouri village, as it seen from the southern city of Tyre, south Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)