 | The Lebanon-Laclede County Library in Lebanon, Mo., lives in a renovated Kmart building. The library had been trying to expand for years before the plan to use the old Kmart site fell into place. The building is now shared by the library, Maria's cafe, and the Route 66 Museum—which is full of maps, road signs, and other memorabilia from the historic highway. The first challenge in the reuse of a big-box store is the space itself—finding a user that needs 40,000 to 200,000 square feet of space is not easy. In this case, the library knew it needed a moneymaking operation on-site to attract visitors in this rural Missouri county. The cafe and the museum pay rent, lowering the overhead costs of residing in the gigantic building, and they bring in people. The building has become a destination for locals and Route 66 enthusiasts alike. |  |
Julia Christensen, Big Box Reuse, MIT Press. |
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