In a dim chapter in architecture and planning history, the 80’s brought a wave of big-box stores to landscapes across the country.
With brick and block construction, massive fluorescent-lit interiors, and asphalt as far as the eye could see, these behemoths filled a niche for a time but, as a cohort, did not age well. When they started to look shoddy, the retailers often decamped to newer, larger, brighter buildings elsewhere and left their sagging buildings behind. These abandoned “ghost boxes” were a painfully visible reminder of community disinvestment as they quietly languished in a sea of empty pavement.