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…A Rax turned Dunkin Donuts

admin — Sun, 21 Feb 2016 05:48:26 +0000

This is another Rax which was a Shanghai Express Chinese restaurant for many years. It sat dormant until recently it became a Dunkin Donuts.

…A Ponderosa Steak house turned closed Mattress Store

admin — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 17:02:47 +0000

This used to be a Ponderosa Steakhouse. Once a chain of hundreds of restaurants in the US and Canada, Ponderosa has now dwindled down to about 40 locations in the midwest and Orlando (a post about Orlando restaurants another day). This particular Ponderosa went through several versions. It is attached to what was once a very vibrant shopping center which had a Home Depot, a grocery store and other stores, all which have closed down in the last 10-15 years. This Ponderosa was a Rent-A-Center for a time, and you can still see its label scar in the awning. It was most recently a matress store which has now closed, leaving the old home of the all-you-can-eat ice cream bar vacant.

Most of these older Ponderosas have a trademark awning running the entire width of the front of the building over the top of a “western ranch front porch”. There are no Ponderosas left in Tampa, FL, when at one time we had at least 4.

…A Rax turned something else that closed

admin — Thu, 13 Aug 2015 05:07:54 +0000

This used to be a Rax, a chain of Roast Beef restaurants similar to Arby’s. Rax reached its peak of about 500 restaurants in the late 80s. They later tried too hard to diversify which eventually backfired causing a Chapter 11 bankruptcy and the closing of most of the restaurants. They were eventually merged with a Hardee’s franchisee who would promise to convert all of the remaining restaurants into Hardee’s by the late 90s. This was never fully realized and proved to be difficult leading to another Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Some of the remaining restaurants were then purchased by Wendy’s and turned into Tim Hortons.

Rax lives on today, but only with about 12 restaurants.

There are a few examples here in Florida of remaining Rax buildings but this example was almost untouched from its original design. The Rax building shape and architectural feature of the outer solarium area was still intact at the time of this photo. Knowing the Rax, Hardee’s, and Wendy’s connection leads me to wonder about where the idea of the fast food restaurant solarium came from as all three of these restaurants had them in their designs at one time or another.

This was briefly a Caribbean Restaurant, and has recently been remodeled and turned into a car dealership leaving it virtually unrecognizable today.

…A Dunkin’ Donuts turned Home Cookin’ diner

admin — Mon, 10 Aug 2015 20:49:12 +0000

This is a former Dunkin’ Donuts that has been another restaurant for about 10 years. This previous style of Dunkin’ is getting quite hard to find now unless it is a previously closed store. Most current Dunkin’ Donuts have now been remodeled into a newer variety. Quite hard to get a decent pic of this because of the feather flags in the way, but it appears to be a home-style cooking restaurant now.

The characteristics that define these stores are the wrap around windows and the slanted but segmented roof around the front and sides of the restaurant. The divided roof segments were are “trademark” of the earlier DD restaurant design.

This Used to Be Updated

admin — Mon, 11 May 2015 21:17:33 +0000

So its been quite a while. I have some recent examples of TUTBs and will be posting some coming very soon!

…A Long John Silver’s turned Starbucks

admin — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 17:17:15 +0000

This is now a Starbucks. I grew up going to this place as a Long John Silvers and it held out for over 25 years until just about a year ago. It has now been transformed inside and is quite a nice place to work and chill out in. It is undergoing LEED certification and boasts of being made of several sustainable materials and using energy efficient LED lighting and lo or no flow toilets. It’s interesting that from the outside it still really doesn’t look that much different than LJS did.

…A Taco Bell turned burger joint

admin — Sun, 15 May 2011 04:33:30 +0000

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…A Captain D’s turned italian ristorante

admin — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 18:26:35 +0000

This is now a popular Italian fine dining restaurant in its area. Inside the restaurant it is almost impossible to tell it used to be a Captain D’s. Its still fairly easy to see the trademark entrance tower with the pitched roof on the front like all Captain D’s had at one time.

…A Big Boy turned used car lot

admin — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 21:10:17 +0000

Big Boy’s were only around in Tampa when I was still young, but this one survived to be a Big Boy until at least the late 80s. You can still see the trademark Big Boy sign out front and the angled roof of the original building. This Big Boy was part of the Frisch’s Big Boy chain of Big Boys. It was known around Tampa as simply being “Frisch’s” for several years. An interesting note about this Big Boy is that it resides in the parking lot of the now defunct Floriland Mall, which at one time had Montgomery Ward, Zayre’s and several other stores. If you are interested in defunct or dead malls, check out the great site DeadMalls.com.

…A Pizza Hut turned greek restaurant

admin — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 05:14:02 +0000

This will probably be the first in a long line of Pizza Hut Used to Be’s we post here. We’re using the picture because the image on GMaps is old. I have literally seen dozens and dozens of these around and they are easily recognizable by the roof top shape and the trapezoidal windows. People try to cover them up, and like here people even try to disguise the place with ugly colors, but you can still tell it used to be a Pizza Hut.