Storm Damage

Storm Damage

The collapse of the K & G Fashion Superstore at 10865 Lincoln Trail in Fairview Heights IL is both tragic and surreal. At least one person was killed: Delancey Moore, a 54-year-old customer, a former St. Clair County Sheriff's Department jail superintendent, and an active resident of East St. Louis. He may have also been kin to SIU prof Debra Moore, but I'm not absolutely sure.

At first glance, I thought this may have been a case of a newly-constructed building failing under adverse conditions.

But actually, now I realize that building is probably about 25 years old, because it has the tell-tale appearance of a St. Louis-area Kroger store. Indeed, the glass-and-steel front entryway looks almost the same as the store built in 1981 as part of South Lakeview Plaza on Lemay Ferry and Forder Roads where my family sometimes shopped during my childhood.

Kroger left St. Louis in 1986, and many of these stores were taken over by National Supermarkets. National, of course, was bought out by Schnucks in 1995. This store probably had a temporary Schnucks banner for a brief time, but then was divested to the "new" National (Family Company of America). It probably closed in 1999 when the new National went belly-up.

Schnucks has a store less than one mile east, at 625 Lincoln Highway.

Since 2001 - and, at least until yesterday - the 10865 Lincoln Trail property was known as Commerce Plaza Center, managed by Koman Properties.