Kmart--automatic doors?

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catnapped
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Kmart--automatic doors?

Post by catnapped »

Anyone know around what year they started incorporating automatic doors into their 'new' store openings (be it built new or just recycling another retailer's building that didn't have them to begin with)? I know they were by the time they revamped stores into the early 1990s model (red/white with the "K" logo) but just wondering if they were using them earlier than that.
wnetmacman
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Re: Kmart--automatic doors?

Post by wnetmacman »

The 1990 remodels and new store openings. Essentially, any time the new K logo was installed, so were the electric doors. The Turquoise and Red logo stores never had them.
Scott Greer
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RandallFlagg
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Re: Kmart--automatic doors?

Post by RandallFlagg »

I opened store 7529 Rancho Cucamonga, CA in 1985. The store is now a JC Penney furniture outlet store. It didn't have automatic doors. When we would bring in carts the doors all had metal rods on top that when inserted into the jamb kept the doors fully opened 90 degrees. I worked there until 01-88 and they were the same when I left.
Super S
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Re: Kmart--automatic doors?

Post by Super S »

Most Kmart stores in my area have a single set of sliding automatic doors which serve as both entrance and exit doors. Some of them also have an enclosed glass area with an additional set of sliding doors as you enter the store, and a set of automatic doors on the side (of which the type varies) as you leave the checkstand area. It seems like most of these arrived with the first Kmart logo change in the early 90s.

For what its worth, on a related note, the Target stores that were built in this area until around the mid-90s had, for whatever reason, automatic exit doors only. Entrance doors were always manual until these stores were remodeled, at that time they were replaced with automatic doors. They always had a door in the center that was marked "Not an Entrance" on one side, and "Not an Exit" on the other which was used primarily to bring carts into the store, but also to enter/exit the store after hours.

On another related note, I distinctly remember visiting several Buttrey food stores in the 1980s that had a set of automatic doors that led from the enclosed area at the front into the main store, but the doors that led into the enclosed area at the front from the outside were manual doors, both entrance and exit. That arrangement never made sense to me, and Buttrey was the only supermarket I remember having that arrangement.
pseudo3d
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Re: Kmart--automatic doors?

Post by pseudo3d »

A local Kmart that closed in 1994 did receive the new 1991 logo but never received any updates other than that whatsoever, keeping the manual doors until its death.
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