What Retail or Place Does Your Town Have Too Many Of

Never enough for DH. When we moved to AZ in '99, there was only one within a ten-mile radius. He got the DTs. I thought we were going to have to move back to Boston.

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Car washes, coffee shops, nail salons

Dollar General. There are five of them within less than 10 miles of my house.

But the most now
urgent cares. Every time a place becomes vacant, some other hospital network opens an urgent care. Some are within walking distance of others.

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So looks like popular answers are:
Coffee shops
Pizza
Car Washes

I’m sure someone out there can figure out over the past 20 years how these have grown % wise.

I do believe America loves their coffee shops.

I don’t see the Dollar Store parking lots jammed packed - do you?

And car washes, I guess people don’t wash their own car at home in the driveway anymore (I do!)

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CVS and Rite Aid. ( well not for long ).

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Upscale versions of regular retail stores

For example, my local supermarket changed from Vons to Pavilions. Vons/Albertsons/Safeway
 and Pavilions are owned by the same company and sell the same products (Pavilions has a specialty area for fine wines/deli items not found at Vons). However, prices are higher on a good portion of products at Pavilions. Navel oranges cost $1.29/lb at Vons and $2.49/lb at Pavilions. It’s an identical orange provided by the same ownership company, but double the price if you buy it at Pavilions instead of Vons. Perhaps they hope people will go the supermarket for the fine wine section or more upscale atmosphere, and people who do so won’t care about certain fruit prices doubling?

When we first moved here
there were tons of water bed stores. They all turned into bagel shops. Then many turned into nail spas.

But the free standing pharmacies
there are 3 CVS stores within five miles on the main road here.

I’m a dunkin fan. You can never have enough. Ask anyone in CT. They are everywhere.

My town has exactly one Italian restaurant that makes pizza. And there are NO coffee shops at all (except our local Dunkin).

Small town.

Our Price Chopper turned into a Market 32
redid the interior to more resemble Whole Foods and raised the prices.

Car washes and mattress stores. We joke that they must be a front for drug dealers or other nefarious people.

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In the town where my sister lives, there are EIGHT different mattress stores on the main road near her
and one really awful small grocery store. I mean really
folks go grocery shopping at least once a week
and get a mattress what
every 10 years?

But funny
a few years ago, an additional mattress store closed, and now it’s a CVS.

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I mainly see mattress and furniture stores sequentially appearing and closing. Seems that they commonly go out of business shortly after opening, with a new one opening in their place, which shortly goes out of business


Bank branches seem to be concentrated in particular areas of a given town or city, although they are slowly declining in number due to mergers and acquisitions.

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This thread reminded me of the old movie and the book it was based on - The Twelve Chairs. :joy:

“IN THE PROVINCIAL TOWN of N. there were so many barbershops and funeral parlors that it seemed as though the town’s inhabitants were born solely to get a shave and a haircut, freshen up with some Vegetal, and then promptly expire. But in actuality, people were born, shaved, and died fairly rarely in the provincial town of N.”

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I’ll be honest, I don’t really know where a mattress store is in our town. Surely we have them, I don’t pay attention!

We live on an island in the Puget Sound. We’re not at all isolated; you can drive onto the island via a bridge, but things are much different here than what everyone else is describing.

Our island is home to about 18,000 people on 95 square miles. There are no cities or towns.

Gas stations: 3
Banks: 2
Grocery stores: 1
Car washes: 0
Lumber stores: 1
Weed stores: 1
Stop lights: 4

We love it here.

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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-02-21/car-washes-are-taking-over-the-us-here-s-why

My town is 11 square miles and we have 4 Dunkins (2 are across the street from each other) and 2 HoneyDews.

We were voted Best Main St in America in 2021 (none of the Dunkins/HoneyDew are on Main St). Our Main St is 1/4 mile and it takes less than 10 minutes to walk from one end to the other. I think there are 4 tattoo shops and 7 or 8 hair salons. It gets confusing as one of the tattoo places is T’s and one of the hair places is Tease.

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Dollar stores! I looked it up a few months ago, but I think we had 15 within a 10 min drive. It used to be lending places, but Virginia made it hard for them to operate and most shut down.

Car washes are just becoming a thing here. We’ve had a few built in the last year or two.

Mattress stores. Must be something shady going on. How often do you buy a mattress?! Ain’t nobody sleeping that much. :slight_smile:

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Banks.

We have 13 banks in our town.

Our town has 18k people.

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Perhaps a sign of worsening household finances in the area?

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