According to court documents filed by Big Lots over the past few days, four Houston area Big Lots locations will likely close before the end of the year. The four locations are 8210 Kirby at OST, 10951 FM 1960 at Jones, and one each in Baytown and Galveston. The closures come only months after other locations in North Houston quietly closed in early 2024, signaling the troubles Big Lots has been experiencing. Big Lots has blamed its bankruptcy on inflation and high interest rates, which have eaten into sales. However, many in the retail community consider this filing a long time coming. Many first raised alarm bells about this one year ago when United Furniture, which manufactured most of the company’s furniture, ceased operations without prior notice. The community’s reasoning seems to be based on the fact that Big Lots has lost its way as a closeout chain and has steered more toward general discounting, with a heavy emphasis on low-end furniture. A consistent comparison is that today’s Big Lots is like a smaller, junkier version of what Kmart tried about ten years ago. While Big Lots has become more generic, true outlet chains like Ollie’s have had no issue jumping into their territory, further muddying the situation. At this point, Big Lots has agreed to be acquired by a private investment firm, which, on paper, has plans to save the chain. However, only time will tell what the final outcome will be.
For me at least, it is a bit unfortunate to see the FM 1960 W & Jones Road location on the closing list. For one, two of the neighboring Big Lots on FM 1960 W closed a few months back (the one on Highway 6 near near FM 529 will still be around, for now). Also, that location specifically was formerly a Pic-N-Save and MacFrugal’s. It had been around as a Big Lots and those preceding banners for a long time. On top of all of that, it is a pretty well preserved early Kroger Greenhouse store, a Superstore II specifically with the curved walls around the greenhouse. Big Lots had put up a new facade around the greenhouse some years back, but the greenhouse is still fully visible and intact behind that new facade. I don’t know what will eventually open in that spot, but I doubt it’ll be anything as interesting as Big Lots, even if Big Lots is pretty dull these days, and I suspect any potential new tenants will remove the vestiges of Kroger.