The MacDonald’s in Assembly Square Mall in Somerville, MA closed when everything (except the K-mart) in the mall closed. It was, however, one of the last things in the mall to go.
The McDonald’s in San Ysidro, CA was closed almost immediately after the massacre there in 1984.
The one in downtown Bellevue, WA (one of the older ones - my father was a management trainee there in the mid 1960s) was closed, the building turned into a Fatburger. However it was a poor location for a restaurant that requires either a lot of parking or a drive-through, neither of which it had nor could have, due to local building codes.
The closure of McDonald’s restaurants is rare, all the same. Unlike say…Skippers, which is almost entirely defunct now as a chain.
Closed and bulldozed, maybe they sowed the ground with salt on Markham, near Fair Park in Little Rock, AR. Down the street from a Wendy’s, near a fancy sandwich joint. After a year or so, there is heavy equipment there apparently preparing a foundation of some sort.
I’m just biased, I guess. I was a shift manager at a McDonald’s. The franchise owner had nine stores. Professionally, I guess he was a good guy, personally, he was a skirt chasing alcoholic, but he was approachable. His district manager would take care of issues with the staff by talking to the person with the problem and the manager and try to find a solution to the problem.
Well, the owner decided to sell the stores that he had. When corporate took over the managers had to work a minimum of 50 scheduled hours. When I say scheduled, I mean that 1pm to an 11pm closing would be your ten hours, but you still had to be there for at least 90 minutes to close the store. Part time employees had to work whatever shifts they were given, and all included a weekend. The fact that some of our employees were single moms and could only work when they had child care was not considered. If you missed two shifts, I had to fire you. Cashiers had to pay back their shortages. The law required that even the employee still had to make minimum wages with the repayment, fine. I was not allowed to release the following paycheck until the person repaid the debt. We were also in the business of cashing employee paychecks to collect on register debts.
Those are just a few examples.
I hate those people, but I do love a double cheeseburger for $1
SSG Schwartz
The first one I heard of closing was in Downtown Lynn, Mass., in the '70safter local winos, etc., frequented the place all night. The next one was in a small southeastern city after a highway widening project built a median across its frontage in the '70’s, preventing left turns in and out. A Mexican restaurant now survives there. A Burger King on the other side of the road also bit the dust, as did a Ded Lobster.
I know the one you mean, on Bath Road, just east of Portsmouth.
It’s a Pizza Pizza franchise now, we ate there during lunch breaks from the college 20 years ago.
Regards
Gus
A McDonald’s closed in Victorville, Ca, but a much bigger one opened a couple blocks away closer to the freeway exit. Same owners, I bet.
Shortly after a BK opened in Altrincham town centre close to me the McDonalds went tits up.
I have to say I much prefer BK and so it seems do most others around here.
At least two of them have closed down in Brisbane - my mother bought the front doors of the old Stafford City store to use in a semi*-legal house extension. Very fine they looked, too.
mm
- by semi, I mean Il
A McDonalds is one of the two businesses I really thought were a money spinner, the other being a shop that was 10 minutes walk away from a school and at the back entrance to the university.
Both of them were in easy distance for students and the McD’s was opposite a big night club to catch the boozed up drinkers. Thinking about it though, an awful lot of small takeaways have come and gone from there, the only three survivors being a KFC, a Bishops (fish n chips franchise) and the might Spuds that truly does serve the most delicious takeaway food whether you’re sober or not.
A McDonald’s in my hometown (Morgantown, WV) closed some time in the late 1980s-early 1990s. The downtown area where it was located had been seeing lots of businesses leave for the suburbs. The area late underwent a gentrified revival – not particularly amenable to a McDonald’s.
There are still several McDonaldses (sic) in the area. I’m not sure if any is owned by the people who closed up the downtown one.
I’ve seen a McDonalds or two close up, but I think it was always because of changing traffic, demographics, a poorly-chosen location, etc. This thread pretty much echoes what I’ve seen.
But has anyone seen an area where McDonalds just leaves? That is, they had ten stores in the northern part of your city, and now there are none? Has McDonalds ever just plain failed badly in a city or a region? It makes sense that a franchise has to relocate from time to time. If the franchise at the corner of Pine and Center closes, but another one opens a mile away, where there’s now a lot more traffic because of the new mall, that’s normal. But has anyone seen McD bomb badly in an entire area?
There’s a McD’s on I-45 at Sawdust Road, just north of Houston, that closed recently, but that’s the first one I remember seeing shut down in years. Not sure why, either, as it seemed both fairly recently-built and quite busy. Others nearby, on less well-traveled routes, remain open.
A few years ago, the McDonalds on Broad Street closed in downtown Columbus, Ohio. This location didn’t have a drive thru and often had agressive panhandlers outside. Interestingly, the first Wendy’s restaurant which was located very close to that McDonalds, also closed recently.
McD’s pulled out of Jamaica, if that helps: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/magazines/Business/html/20051001T210000-0500_89555_OBS_MCDONALD_S_LEAVING_JAMAICA__.asp
And had mass closings in the Middle East and Latin America: http://www.govegantexas.org/news_02-11mcdonaldsreuters.php
I bet the employees love that! And they don’t even get tips like Waffle House or Aunt Sarah’s Pancake House.
Twenty years ago there was one on West 117th in Cleveland between Lorain Road and Bellaire Road, which closed and became a family restaurant.
Slight hijack – one of the weirder franchise sites I’ve seen was in Jamestown, NY in the early 80’s. An Arby’s opened up in what must have been a former small local business with a classic walk-up residence upstairs from it. It was only as wide as your average small shopowners place (e.g. tiny record store, shoe repairs, etc.) and not a lot of eating room on the first floor, but you could walk up to the second story to eat as well. I thought it was weird then, and still think it’s weird, since the configuration of downtown Jamestown doesn’t seem particularly amenable to fast food locations.
Then again, the place wasn’t and is not gentrified, and at least in the early 80’s the downtown had not completely died out as a target for blue collar commercial shopping.
I don’t think that Arby’s is still in business. But the McDonalds a little ways down the road from the Ball Museum, right next to where the old Ames used to be, is still thriving. But it’s right next to a mall, and I don’t think I’ve seen McDonalds that are right next to a mall, strip or not, close.
Recently, there was a news item about a McDonalds in some Wyoming boom town where the local mine (?) made the area so prosperous that nobody wanted to work at McDonalds. The manager upped the wages to $10/hr, resulting in nothing but angry phone calls from the owners of every other local restaurant. I could see them closing soon.
Sorry I don’t have a cite, but it was definitely within the past three months.
I’ve been to that one, back in 1999. I coulda sworn that that McDonald’s closed for a while in 2000 or so.
(I seem to recall that the county line is just south of I-76 on Rt 202. But I threw out my old maps not too long ago.)