The Babies R Us signs are gone. The employee that we interrogated (she confessed that many of the employees are seeking new jobs) said that the new owners are remodeling and getting rid of the toys. I expect Toys R Us to be gone by the end of the year. Zainy Brainy left two years ago. I hope Smart Toys isn’t going anywhere. Proffitts is being replaced by Belk’s(yuck). Best Buy is changing its’ focus to Geek Squad and businesses instead of retail customers. Restaurants disappear overnight. Oak Ridge is a company town but all of East TN is becoming Wal-Mart town and that is a shame.
I know what you mean. I was trying to find a refill for a nice pen I have and all we have here in Columbia are the three big boxes (Staples, OfficeMax, Office Depot) and none of them carry the right refill (right brand, wrong refill) and there are NO small business supply stores because of the dominance of the big boxes. I found my refill online … $2.17 for the refill, $7.95 for shipping! Nice!
Most of Knoxville is suburbs anyway. There are Wal-Marts in Powell, Halls, East, Walker Springs, Turkey Creek, South Knox. That’s one Wal-Mart per every 66,000 people in Knoxville/Knox Co.
I think the problem with Belk over Proffitts is that Proffitts was locally owned.
And I agree that restaurants are a dime a dozen. They are poorly run.
I don’t want to read anything into what Cathy posted, but i think the gist of it is that we are losing locally owned businesses to the big corporations and it feels like we are losing our soul 🙁
Not really. Use the toy example. If Smart Toys goes under then I will be leaving Knox County to do toy shopping so tax dollars will be going elsewhere.
Well, no matter who owns them every single one of the employees in all the chain-stores lives and breathes here in East Tennessee. They send their kids to the local schools, shop at the local grocery stores and get gas at local gas stations. Just because the owners are out of town doesn’t make them all bad or even undesirable.
What’s wrong with Belk’s? Not that I care, really, I just know nothing about it.
And I haven’t noticed anything different about Best Buy lately – they still seem very retail heavy.
And the restaurant thing…who knows. Knoxville is chock-a-block with poor restaurant managing. I think very few of the closings have to do with either the food or volume of customers, since most restaurants are mostly full every night. It has to do with the way they’re run..
And I think if you look around you’ll see we’re not becoming Wal-mart town. Aren’t there only two in the city limits (Walker Springs and East Towne?). Maybe I’m missing one.