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The first-ever Super Kmart in America once stood in Aaron’s hometown of Medina, Ohio—a place where he grew up under blue light specials and late-night wanderings with friends. Years after the store shut down, seagulls claimed the empty parking lot, and his daughter renamed it the “Seagull Zoo.” Now that the building has been torn down and replaced by Meijer, Aaron is left wondering—stores may change, but do the memories, and the moments we share in them, ever really fade?
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The Team:
Story created & performed by: Aaron Calafato
Senior Audio Engineer: Ken Wendt
Additional vocals: Cori Calafato
Art: Pete Whitehead
Original Theme Music: thomas j. duke
Additional Soundscape Design: Isaac Gehring
TRANSCRIPT
Before the seagulls took over, this spot in my hometown of Medina, Ohio, was home to the first-ever Super Kmart in America. Not just a regular Kmart — we already had one of those across the way — but the very first Super Kmart, and they chose Medina, Ohio to build it.
I was eight years old, and I’ll never forget what a big deal it was for the town. From Thursday through Sunday, there was news coverage, local politicians, crowds of people, ribbon-cutting — the whole thing. This was the early ’90s, the beginning of that rise into prosperity. The convenience of this place was wild. Imagine combining a Giant Eagle and smashing it together with a Kohl’s. That might not sound exciting now, but back then? Huge deal.
You could spend hours inside. I know I did. I swear a quarter of my childhood memories took place in that Super Kmart. I remember standing in the shopping cart while my mom pushed me through the clothing section. Her eyes were wide because she could get all her errands done in one place, and all I could think was, get me out of here and into the toy section.
She was back-to-school shopping and asked, “You can get one or two pairs of jeans — which do you want?” I said, “I want the MC Hammer ones — the kind with the elastic at the bottom, can’t touch this.” She said they were too expensive and that she could get the regular jeans and just roll up the bottoms. I said, “But Mom, people will notice.” She said, “No one’s going to notice anything.”
If I could just survive that section, I knew the toys were around the corner. But then she’d say, “Just after this, we have to stop at the deli,” and I’d panic because the deli was all the way on the other side of the store. And there we’d stand, waiting in line while my mom held a little ticket for half a pound of bologna on sale for the week.
My favorite memories of Super Kmart came later — my teenage years — right before graduation. In a small town like Medina, there wasn’t much to do after 10 p.m. unless you were at someone’s house. So our go-to plan was, “Let’s go crush some Taco Bell.” Not just eat — crush food. But everyone had the same idea. The drive-through line wrapped around the building. You’d be packed into a tiny car with six friends, arguing over who got to play their CD next, laughing and waiting an hour for cheap food.
After that, we’d drive to the Super Kmart. By late night, the normal crowd was gone, and the night-shift workers and a handful of teenagers were all that was left. Walking inside felt like stepping into a museum of fluorescent light and endless aisles. We’d run around with carts, treating it like our own private playground. I feel bad now for the employees trying to earn a living while we acted like idiots, never buying anything — maybe a soda if someone had a dollar.
Kmart even had its own radio station — Kmart Radio — and this weird, echoing music would play through the store. It was almost hypnotic. You’d lose track of time, like they designed the music specifically to keep you wandering the aisles just long enough to buy one more thing.
But even Kmart Radio couldn’t stop what was coming.
As I got older, I started to notice fewer cars in the parking lot. Day and night, the place just emptied out. I didn’t understand the economic reasons — Walmart competition, corporate decisions, any of that. What I did notice were the seagulls.
When the parking lot got empty enough to look like a stretch of coastline, the first seagulls showed up. I don’t know if one flew in like a scout or what, but soon there were dozens. Then hundreds. They were there when I graduated high school, when I went to college, when I moved to New York, and when I moved back home again. The store finally closed for good in 2013. Just this massive empty building and a parking lot filled with seagulls.
At first, it made me sad. But then I thought — the seagulls were making the best of it. Maybe I should too.
At that time, my daughter was one or two years old. I didn’t have a lot of money. So one day, I bought a bag of day-old bread, drove us out to the empty Super Kmart parking lot, and we fed the seagulls. Hundreds of them, surrounding the car in a frenzy. My daughter’s face lit up. She thought it was the greatest thing in the world, so I did too. She looked at me and said, “Dad, can you promise we can keep coming back to the Seagull Zoo?”
I looked at her. Then up at the building where Super Kmart used to be. I could almost see myself as a kid walking those aisles with my mom. I looked back at my daughter and said, “Of course, sweetheart. We can come back to the Seagull Zoo.”
And we did. For almost ten years. She’s ten now, which means that store and that parking lot have been empty just as long.
But things are changing again. I just heard the building has been torn down, and they’re putting up a new superstore — Meijer. It’ll probably be a big deal for the town, just like Super Kmart was in 1991. I’m sure they’ll keep the parking lot. They’ll need all those spaces.
But as I drove by the construction site the other day, I thought — I need to tell this story. For me. For my daughter. To keep this memory alive.
And I couldn’t help but wonder… what’s going to happen to the Seagull Zoo?
