[Suburbia Lost] Toys "R" Us, TGI Friday's, and Michel Tires Plus - Springdale, OH

In Springdale, north of Cincinnati: a Toys "R" Us that was abandoned well before the company faced its current death via bankruptcy, a tire store, and a TGI Friday's.

The shuttered, casual dining establishment could almost be mistaken for an abandoned Applebees, O'Charley's, Ruby Tuesday's, or Chili's. Chili's and O'Charley's are still making a go of it in Springdale, but the Applebee's is now a nightclub and the Ruby Tuesday's has disappeared from the nearby Tri-County Mall. That mall, is nowhere near as far gone as Cincinnati Mall/Mills/Forest Fair, but a lot of the tenants have moved out to join businesses in freshly created strip malls built in the parking lot. Ironically, the one outlying parking lot business which predated all of the new ones, is abandoned and seen here.

Springdale is still a nice place, one that has evolved with the changing trends of suburbia. Unlike many of Cincinnati's other burbs, there are transit connections along the main drags (with shelters) and although there's plenty of strip malls with empty storefronts and swaths of ill maintained parking lots, development has been shifted to the more successful retail centers and brought closer to the street. It's not a great place to take a walk, but it's all far more walkable than similar cities in the region.

While grabbing gas recently near all of this, I ended up talking with a gentleman experiencing homelessness. He claimed that on cold nights he often sleeps in unlocked, overstock dealership cars being stored in the parking lot that once served this Toys "R" Us and Friday's. Springdale is heavy with car dealerships and the storage of excess vehicles makes these retail centers look far more active than they really are.

View the other entires in the Suburbia Lost series.