6 Ohio Chain Stores From the 1980s That Are Gone for Good

Some store names feel like part of the family.

Ohioans who shopped in the 1980s may still picture their trips downtown and to the mall, and the names they came to know.

Here’s a look back at the ones that didn’t make it.

1. Higbee’s

If you shopped at Higbee’s in 1986, your store was one of those 14 in northeast Ohio.

If you’re looking for Cleveland’s Christmas traditions, Higbee’s Cleveland store became Mr. Jingeling’s home after Halle’s closed in 1982.

Dillard Department Stores and Edward J. DeBartolo bought the chain in 1987.

In July 1992, DeBartolo sold his share, and the chain took the Dillard’s name.

If you looked for a Higbee’s sign after July 1992, you’d find Dillard’s instead.

2. Shillito Rike’s

In 1982, Federated merged Rike’s of Dayton with its Cincinnati unit, Shillito’s, and the combined department store company became Shillito Rike’s.

Ohio Magazine says Shillito’s was one of the department stores known for ornate holiday window displays.

By January 1986, the Shillito division ran 14 stores in southern Ohio and northern Kentucky.

That year, Federated replaced the Shillito Rike’s name with Lazarus.

The 1986 merger into Lazarus ended all uses of the Rike name.

If you’re tracing Shillito’s, count two name changes in four years: Shillito Rike’s in 1982, then Lazarus in 1986.

If you were hunting for a Rike’s sign in Dayton after 1986, you’d come up empty.

3. Lazarus

Lazarus’s flagship store stood at the corner of High and Town streets in downtown Columbus.

The building remains.

Lazarus turned its entire sixth floor into a Santaland built to look like the North Pole, Ohio Magazine says.

Its Secret Santa’s Workshop let children shop with store employees for their parents’ presents, unsupervised.

The Ohio History Connection says shopping excursions to Lazarus were often a full-day affair.

If you went, lunch at one of the store’s several dining options was part of the day.

The downtown Columbus building closed on August 14, 2004.

Ohio Memory says the company’s stores became part of the Macy’s brand.

In Cincinnati, the former Shillito’s store became Lazarus-Macy’s in 2003 and simply Macy’s in 2005, according to the Northern Kentucky Tribune.

4. Elder-Beerman

Elder-Beerman started as a Dayton store in 1883, when an ad for Thomas Elder’s Boston Dry Goods Store ran in the Dayton Daily Journal.

In 1989, the chain bought 10 Meis department stores in Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky, bringing its total to 43 department stores.

If you do the math, 10 of those 43 stores came from Meis.

Its 50th store opened at the Mall at Fairfield Commons in Beavercreek in 1993.

Bon-Ton paid $92.8 million for Elder-Beerman in 2003.

After filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February 2018, Bon-Ton started liquidation sales that April.

The last Elder-Beerman stores closed in 2018, including locations at Fairfield Commons, the Dayton Mall and Huber Heights.

If you lived in the Dayton area, that was the end of your local Elder-Beerman.

5. Phar-Mor

If you're tracing the chain to its start, Phar-Mor was incorporated in 1982, according to an Encyclopedia.com company profile.

The company said its "power buying" let it pass savings of 25 to 40 percent off suggested retail prices to customers.

By 1987, the chain had nearly 70 stores, and it opened its 100th a year later.

In mid-August 1992, Phar-Mor filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and by year's end it had closed or sold 167 of its 310 stores.

Phar-Mor filed for Chapter 11 again in September 2001, Supermarket News reported.

In August 2002, the trade publication said Phar-Mor would close its remaining 73 stores.

If you still had a Phar-Mor nearby that August, it was among those 73.

6. Sun TV

Sun Television and Appliances, known as Sun TV, was a Columbus-based store chain, and its Encyclopedia.com company profile calls it Ohio's leading consumer electronics and appliance discounter.

By the early 1980s, the company was selling a wide variety of merchandise through a chain of stores.

Its first store outside Ohio came in 1988, when it added a superstore in Mars, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh.

Most of its new stores were superstores with 20,000 square feet of net selling space.

If you're wondering how the shelves stayed full, Sun TV kept a warehouse in Columbus and moved merchandise on its own trucks.

Sales grew from $157.24 million in 1989 to $398.64 million in 1993.

In November 1998, Sun TV started closing its remaining 30 stores and laying off 2,800 workers in five states, according to United Press International.