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Re: Long John Silver's freestanding stores

Posted: 27 Oct 2008 21:56
by Groceteria
Reminder: let's plaese keep tis focused on history rather than new stores.

Thanks,
David

Re: Long John Silver's freestanding stores

Posted: 28 Oct 2008 00:43
by TenPoundHammer
Daniel wrote:Where is this?
East Tawas, Michigan. 15 miles south of where I live.

Re: Long John Silver's freestanding stores

Posted: 13 Nov 2008 00:17
by Dean
Dean wrote:
luckysaver wrote:I thought Puente Hills recently closed. This building has been there a long time and used the current logo at the time they closed. Only the frame and part of the exterior is left standing when I drove by a couple of weeks ago. Its probably being converted to some other restaurant or shop.

LJS is owned the restaurant group that owns A&W Restaurants.

luckysaver
PHills is becoming KFC I believe, as did the Burger King on Hacienda.
Puente Hills has officially been converted to KFC.

What is funny with this...is how this KFC has continued to move west on Colima Road.

The KFC was originally @ Colima and Nogales. That site is now Pizza Hut.
It then moved to Colima and Batson. Currently an independent Asian site BOSTON KITCHEN--not BOSTON MARKET !!
Now in the former LJS...Colima @ Stoner Creek (Yes, that is the real street name! Was built in the mid-80s...you can imagine the "stoners" that LOVED that street! Ha!)

Enjoyed taking my kids to this LJS...primarily for their pirate-type hats!

Re: Long John Silver's freestanding stores

Posted: 25 Mar 2009 20:54
by drpep
There is a nice older free standing LJS in Williamsport, PA. I wish I had thought to take a picture. The only two freestanding LJS in upstate NY have closed within the last 2 years. The one in Horseheads because of highway relocation, although the building still stands, and the one in Geneva closed for unknown, to me, reason.

Re: Long John Silver's freestanding stores

Posted: 26 Mar 2009 00:07
by TenPoundHammer
Did LJS have any financial trouble in the 1990s? I've found a bunch of store closings in that decade, way before they began swapping out stores for combos (Marquette was apparently the first to go, as a friend of mine remembers the building being a credit union even in 1990. Traverse City was next, becoming a Taco Bell sometime around 1995.) Here is a list of all the former ones I know of. Note that most of these are in Detroit. About 2/3 of the remaining ones in Michigan are still standalones. It's kind of an odd mix: Except for Big Rapids (an existing KFC that was added onto), all of the ones west of Lansing are still standalones. This includes Grand Rapids (four), Kalamazoo (two), Holland, Muskegon, Benton Harbor, Niles, Battle Creek. There was a second LJS in Holland that was a Taco Bell combo, as well as an LJS/TB in Greenville. Both live on as just Taco Bell. Lansing itself appears to have a KFC/A&W/Long John Silvers!

One of the Flint-area ones is an oddball. It's in Lennon, a small farming town with almost nothing else than a bar and two gas stations. The BP station was built maybe three years ago with A&W and Long John Silvers in it. It's about two miles from the freeway, and ten miles east of the decent-sized city of Owosso (which would make perfect sense as a site for LJS) on M-21, surrounded by fields. Every time I've been at this particular location it's been deserted. How they ever stay in business I'll never know.

Re: Long John Silver's freestanding stores

Posted: 26 Mar 2009 00:36
by Andrew T.
I'm a bit curious about these Long John Silver's to Taco Bell conversions: What do they look like, architecturally? It's kind of ironic, when you consider that both chains eventually ended up in the same hands...

Re: Long John Silver's freestanding stores

Posted: 26 Mar 2009 22:43
by TenPoundHammer
Andrew T. wrote:I'm a bit curious about these Long John Silver's to Taco Bell conversions: What do they look like, architecturally? It's kind of ironic, when you consider that both chains eventually ended up in the same hands...
Traverse City is the only LJS->TB convert i know of. It looks like any other Taco Bell, except a little more boxy. No trace of the ___^ type roof that LJS had.

Re: Long John Silver's freestanding stores

Posted: 27 Mar 2009 20:15
by LadyNoir
In the Chicago area there is still a freestanding Long John's in I think Lincolnwood on Toughy Ave. I went in here once a few years ago. It is straight up old school with the old bell still being rung and everything. Looked like it hadn't been updated since it was built. A similar one to this one existed in my old neighborhood in West Rogers Park and closed sometime in the late 1990s. Eventually it was torn down for a KFC. Last summer I was biking and found a prototype for an old 70s-ish LJS on Central near Bemont in the northwest side of the city. Don't know when it closed. I am guessing it has been a very long time. It is some sort of insurance place now. I only know of one combo KFC/LJS close to Oak Park on North Ave.

Re: Long John Silver's freestanding stores

Posted: 07 Apr 2009 09:52
by hojos
TenPoundHammer wrote:Did LJS have any financial trouble in the 1990s? I've found a bunch of store closings in that decade, way before they began swapping out stores for combos
I think they came close to bankruptcy in the mid 90s. They closed a bunch of stores in the Atlanta area around '94. Last time I was out that way, there was an open, freestanding LJS on Roswell Rd at Frey's Gin in Marietta, GA.

Re: Long John Silver's freestanding stores

Posted: 11 May 2009 12:19
by BK31
hojos wrote:
I think they came close to bankruptcy in the mid 90s. They closed a bunch of stores in the Atlanta area around '94. Last time I was out that way, there was an open, freestanding LJS on Roswell Rd at Frey's Gin in Marietta, GA.
That one has been repurposed as a ma and pa chicken and shrimp place for at least the last couple years since I moved to Marietta, but its still plainly obvious that it was a LJS. All the new owners did is give it a bright primary color paint job. Lots of yellow and red with bits of blue. My personal favorite part to their 'remodel' was painting the rope railing yellow. Who paints rope?

That whole strip on Roswell from the big chicken at hwy 41 east to just past I-75 is loaded with former restaurant prototypes. There's the old LJS, and old early 80's Burger King, an old Hardees with the 45 degree tiled planter walls, and the big chicken itself which was originally Johnny Reb's before becoming a KFC. Even the old Kmart there just closed up 3-4 months ago and recently reopened as a Sears Outlet.

Re: Long John Silver's freestanding stores

Posted: 06 Sep 2009 12:30
by carolinatraveler
A couple of recent observations of free standing Long John Silvers restaurants. An older unit, circa 1970s, exists on Cumberland Road in Bluefield, WV. And then, just yesterday, I saw a newer (90s) free standing LJS on Blowing Rock Road in Boone, NC. LJS is pretty thin in this part of the country, and all others I know of are co-branded with other Yum brands, mostly Taco Bell.

Wayne Henderson

Re: Long John Silver's freestanding stores

Posted: 06 Sep 2009 15:23
by lugnut
In my little area of Southwest Missouri, the free-standing LJS doesn't yet appear to be becoming an endangered species. There's two fairly old stores still operating in Joplin MO, and one built in the mid/late '90s in Neosho. I do think the one in nearby Miami, OK may have become integrated with a Taco Bell, but there was a pretty large flood in the city a few years back and it's possible that the original LJS was damaged then, since I think the new one is an entirely new building. (Perhaps the parent company didn't see the logic in reconstructing a standalone store.)

Re: Long John Silver's freestanding stores

Posted: 09 Jun 2011 18:44
by BK31
In Albany, GA I recently remember seeing what appeared to be 2 stand alone LJS on the same block separated by an old Sonic that is now a used car lot. On N. Slappey Blvd near 11th Avenue there is a Subway in what looks to be a former late 70's style LJS like the one near the Big Chicken in Marietta, GA with the two doors on the front separated by the big window that most people are familiar with. Two lots down on the side of the street is a still operating LJS (as of Spring 2011) that looks more late 80's / early 90's that would've probably started its life with the primary color signage with the waving flag. It had a little 45 degree chamfer at the upper corners of all the windows on the front and doors on the sides, plus a drive thru

Re: Long John Silver's freestanding stores

Posted: 12 Jul 2011 19:24
by LadyNoir
Recently been driving past one at 123 Harlem Ave in Forest Park, IL, similar in 70s style to the one I had posted about in Lincolwood. A look at the website says that the only other freestanding LJS store in the Chicago area aside from Forest Park and Lincolnwood is in Countryside,

Re: Long John Silver's freestanding stores

Posted: 22 Jul 2011 19:12
by drpep
There are many free standing LJS in southwest Virginia and along I-81 in VA.