Thinking inside the big box (stores)

Posted on Sunday, July 10, 2005

RECYCLING BUILDINGS

Artist documents the recycling of superstores into churches, schools, racetracks and, in one case, a museum dedicated to Spam.

BY EVE M. KAHN
New York Times Service

Julia Christensen is on a cross-country drive to places no other tourist would care to notice. In her 1999 Subaru Forester, Christensen, a 28-year-old artist, is trawling the American landscape in search of big-box superstores that are now used as churches, schools, racetracks and, in one case, a museum dedicated to Spam, the canned meat.
	Julia Christensen may be the only scholar studying the conversion of big-box stores to unlikely new uses.

Christensen, who has made the field of big-box reuse her academic and artistic specialty, has already logged some 20,000 miles during two previous trips over the past two years in pursuit of former Wal-Marts, Winn-Dixies and Kmarts. Along the way, she has become an expert in the ingenious and innovative ways that communities have reclaimed abandoned, architecturally uninspiring megastores.

''It's such a story every time of people being creative and resourceful about filling a huge hole in their town,'' said Christensen, who posts her findings at her website ( bigboxreuse.com). ``They're breathing life into these buildings.''

She also lectures and consults on the topic, which was the focus of her recently awarded master of fine arts degree in electronic arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Between journeys, Christensen hunkers down in a three-room graduate-student apartment in a Victorian brick mansion in Troy, N.Y. A Hammond map of the United States dominates one wall of the living room. Her routes so far, snaking from Troy to points south and west and back, are highlighted in pink marker. Over the sofa hang photos of some of her favorite reused superstores: a Wal-Mart turned church in Pinellas Park, Fla., and a 40,000-square-foot former Kmart in Austin, Minn., which, with the addition of some brick gables, has become the Spam Museum.

Taped interviews with owners, neighbors, city officials and real estate executives are piled on her desk. Stored in her computers are thousands of photographs of big boxes and surrounding sprawl, some of which she plans to include in a book cataloging the transformations of stores.

A CONSULTANT

Christensen is sought after by church leaders, city officials and developers, who solicit her advice on what to do with these bland structures, and how to cope with the devastating impact the shuttered buildings have on neighborhoods.

Still, Christensen doesn't have an obvious political agenda, or at least she doesn't let on about one. Her goal, she says, is to ``focus on what the people and the communities are making happen now, and not on what a corporation did, so I can connect with all kinds of people.''

As a result, her website has become a place for big-box reusers to network. Her presentations, using video, audio tapes and photographs taken on the road, are a kind of performance art. Trained as an actress, she tells anecdotes about how a church was carved out of a Winn-Dixie, or how a Kmart became an elementary school.

Kimberly M. Huston, president of the Nelson County Economic Development Agency in Bardstown, Ky., said that Christensen -- who grew up in Bardstown and has lectured there -- encourages her listeners to imagine the potential of big boxes. ''She's been energizing people across the country,'' Huston said.

HER INSPIRATION

Bardstown has a Wal-Mart tale of its own, one that helped inspire Christensen's obsession. Over the past 14 years, two Wal-Marts in the town -- with a population of around 10,000 and some 300 buildings in the National Register of Historical Places -- have closed. One was razed by the county and replaced with a neo-classical justice center; the other is empty. A new 200,000-square-foot Wal-Mart opened last fall on the edge of town.

''Over and over, the question in Bardstown has been, how did this happen? How are we on our third Wal-Mart, in a town riddled with preservationists?'' Christensen said. ``When the justice center went up, on a site that was sitting empty for eight years, that got me thinking. This is such an interesting reclamation of space.''

When retailers like Wal-Mart outgrow buildings, they usually move to even bigger quarters nearby rather than face the disruption of adding on to their stores. Retail chains are reluctant to sell unused buildings to competitors, which is why about 350 Wal-Marts are currently empty. Mia Masten, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman, said she wasn't aware of Christensen's work. She said the company likes to see its buildings recycled because ``they're very versatile.''

Christensen isn't the first person to chronicle superstore makeovers. Websites like www.theboxtank.com and www.sprawl-busters.com, which focus on the darker side of sprawl, have mentioned inventive or bizarre reuse projects. Matthew Coolidge, a project manager for the Center for Land Use Interpretation, an organization in Culver City, Calif., which studies landscape change and sponsors artists, said Christensen is ``the only one who's looked at the phenomenon systematically, up close and on a national scale.''

''I could be this database that sits here and never moves, but it's been so important to me to go out and investigate,'' she said.

Copyright 2005 Knight Ridder

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