Today’s building is in Flemington, New Jersey, along the main highway running into town. It isn’t terribly unique or interesting, so I’ll jump into it. Here are three views of the building, which is about to open as a Starbucks (the first time Flemington has had one!)

Any guesses? As the title suggests, it was something else that had a drive-thru. I checked to see if the old drive-thru was in the same spot, and it was, but for some reason they got rid of this nice overhang that would have protected customers from the rain. This is a Google Street View image from about 2015.

By now you probably know what you’re looking at: a bank. It was built something like 15 years ago, and was three or four different banks before it sat vacant for awhile. Then Starbucks came along.

Banks are ubiquitous, possibly overbuilt, and seem like excellent prospects for this kind of conversion. A coffee shop, in this location, is still a car-oriented building, but it generates more foot traffic and adds more to the public realm, such as it is.

This brings to mind a comment I received once on a tweet awhile back, on this very subject. Somebody pointed out that bank vaults are quite expensive to remove, and so conversions are more expensive than they look from the outside. There’s a sort of path dependency that keeps banks banks. Have you ever seen a former bank housing a restaurant or specialty store, and the vault is still in there? That’s probably why.

You learn something new every day, even from a ticky-tacky roadside building. That’s why I love this kind of thing. I hope you do too.

Related Reading:

A Magnificent Liquor Store in High Bridge, NJ

What Do You Think You’re Looking At? #25

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