This building is located at 2810 South Federal Avenue, near the Rose Bowl.  Quality Stores, Inc. went bankrupt in 2001 and had to shutter many stores, while Tractor Supply Co. bought up a bunch of the leases.  This town ain’t big enough for two places that sell Carhartt coats!

Of course, this is a visible enough building that it becomes one of the first things you see if you drive in from the neglected south side.  Despite the promises of the new Avenue of the Saints corridor not much has changed down here.  If the trees grow more, they’ll do a better job of covering up this little patch of decay.

Hunting for property information can sometimes be a crap-shoot.  Obviously based on the signage it’s owned by Brallier Plumbing, and the lot next to this one is owned by Brallier, but I was not able to locate the specific property listing for this parcel on the 600 block of south Federal Avenue.  I’m chalking it up as a documentation anomaly.

Does anyone have any information on what used to be in this building?  It looks like either an old service station, or the word’s smallest hotel.

I need to reiterate that I really do like the buildings I post on here.  Many of them have interesting quirks that are probably not conducive to purchase or rental for a viable business, but I still would love to see an active business utilizing the plethora of vacant space in the city, even if those spaces are individually small.  I do my best not to just be simply negative in tone when I write about these buildings.

Did you notice that I managed to get two dumpsters in the background of the first image?

The intersection in this photograph is 4th Street Southwest and South Federal Avenue.  This intersection probably has the most traffic during the day, and is highly visible.  The decaying building foundation you see in the photo is 425 S Federal, former location of Mechanical Air Systems, which was a large brick building.  Everything else is a gravel covered lot that has been a gravel covered lot as long as I can remember.

You can view this property’s information at the Cerro Gordo country website.  I’ll be posting links to the county’s website for properties from here on and may even update old posts.

Behind the lots is a portion of south Delaware Avenue that connects with the rest of the one-way loop around central downtown.  After the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge disaster in 2007, mass hysteria ensued that led everyone to believe that every bridge that was more than two years old would collapse in a similar manner within the next two weeks.  This bridge was found to have some structural deficiency, and since then has been closed to vehicular traffic.  Two businesses operate on the portion of south Delaware Avenue that is now a dead end street.  This helpful vinyl sign seems to be the city’s way of saying ‘Sorry’.

I don’t recall there ever being anything in this building, but I’m sure there was some forgettable business in here.  I like the building despite its simplicity.  Was this some sort of Home Decor store?  It’s located across the street from the Casey’s on South Federal Avenue, amongst the plates of decaying concrete of the Southport parking desert.

The Firestone building is located on the 100 block of west State Street. Various businesses have occupied this building, but I’ve never been inside.  I don’t know the condition of the building, but it’s always been one of my favorites.  It’s located across the street from the Principal Financial building, and near the YWCA building.

This building was initially a Target store.  When the nation’s first SuperTarget location was built on the west side of town in the 90s, this facility sat vacant for many years until Hobby Lobby occupied it.

After Wal-Mart built a new Supercenter location, they vacated their Plaza West location.  That building sat vacant for a couple of years until Hobby Lobby moved in.  Now this building serves as another empty storefront in the mostly vacant Southport strip mall.

This building was built in 1882 and has some work done on it recently.  It’s the third in a line of empty buildings on the 200 block of North Federal, which is only a block from City Hall, Central Park, Southbridge Mall, the Park Inn Hotel, and the rest of Downtown.  It also made the list of a ‘Most Endangered’ list for historic properties, and has a Wikipedia page.

This until recently had a sign advertising it as Len-Jus Salve.  There’s an old Chevy Caprice wagon seen around sometimes advertising the salve on many magnetic stickers on the vehicle.  There’s also one that simply says ‘WEB SITE’.  It doesn’t have an address on it, just the words ‘WEB SITE’.

Former Holiday gas station, South Federal near Happy Wok and Diamond Vogel Paints.  It’s been vacant for several years, but I can’t recall exactly how many.  It’s amazing how fast a structure can look like it’s been closed for far longer than it actually has.