Dinner Break!!! McDonald's - Littleton, CO

A few months ago, I wrote about an abandoned gas station that was close to the house in Littleton I moved to in 2005. That place was never open during the year I lived at the house.

A few blocks to the northwest of that house was a McDonald's. They were very much open and a quick convenient food option while living is a house with a bunch of other people, and choosing not to cook.

Their role in my Littleton Life was to provide sustenance that those 40 cent Safeway bean and cheese burritos and Safeway Berry Crackles did not...

Featuring Crackles, the strung-out Safeway Berry-flavored cereal mascot...

Safeway (and their awesome label-scar) was a few blocks from the house, and was a frequent 6am stop on my way home from work.

I moved back to Englewood in 2006, and Safeway closed in May, 2015.

The large vacant former grocery building was demolished almost exactly two years later, in 2017. 

That story will be told a different day.

This McDonald's was mere blocks from Columbine High School, and was always crawling with high school kids in the afternoons and early evenings. I'm rarely in this part of town anymore, and missed not only it's closing, but also it's updating remodel.

On the exterior, the noticeable difference is the 1970's trademark McDonald's roof lights were now gone. The pieces that matched the contour vertically, identified the building as a McDonald's if by some chance you didn't see the glowing yellow M. In this case, the updating remodel reduced the former giant golden M, to a small light up square. Placed in that now empty frame, mostly hidden amongst the shrubbery.

Lucky me! As I was writing this, I found the above image of a McDonald's roof being converted (after closing as a McDonald's) in North Wildwood, New Jersey.

The exterior windows have been redone as well. Now framed by shined aluminum!

Hidden by the McDonald's building is/was a long closed K-Mart. This particular K-Mart closed in the mid 1980's, and sat boarded up until early 2005 (just before I moved here). Shortly before I moved here, a church bought the old K-Mart, and was converting it into a church. Once completed, all indications of it being a K-Mart were gone.

In Summer of 2005, you could still see a little K, before it became all about the lower case T.

While the place looked fairly different from a distance on the outside, the sidewalk brick and entrance doors all were the same as the McDonald's I visited at least once a week from May 2005 through May 2006.

My frequent patronage of the still-Golden Arches, lead to my roommate giving me a discount card from a local school charity promotion. It may have even been for Columbine, I don't remember. I do remember that I never used it...

Here's the drive thru! Including the deactivated red LED light-up order screen, which was surprisingly intact and unvandalized.

When I walked around to the back of the building, I startled a dude sitting on the ground. In a different neighborhood, this is an uncomfortable confrontation. You never know what the abandoned building loiterers are up to.

But this is Littleton... So this guy was just fixing his bike tire. He finished up and rode off quickly to the south after seeing me...

He never even said "Hi!"...

Coming around the order taking speaker and menu boards to the drive thru windows. The lot has a some nice green poking up through the pavement. Always one of my favorite things about vacant buildings...

Looking west at the former Coal Mine Avenue McDonald's, and it's drive thru windows... 

Inside the southern-most drive through window, there's a fire extinguisher and some of the triple sinks can be seen through here.

Behind the front counter at McDonald's, looking through the "get your food here" drive thru window. I appreciate them leaving the lights on for me, even if the shake machine is still down...

The dining area has seen some minor furniture shuffling, but most of it is still intact. From the way this McDonald's has been left, it's almost like they planned on re-opening. Doesn't look like it will though.

Looking across the dining room towards the front counter. The lobby of this McDonald's does not look anything like it did in 2005-06. There also appears to be a few minor leaks in the roof...

Oh, so here's where all those tables went... They just migrated to the western half of McDonald's. 

Which does make sense, the eastern side is a lot sunnier...

The remodel made the store appear smaller than it used to. This was always a scaled back McDonald's location, which didn't have the giant indoor (or outdoor) Playland germ tank attached. I still remember it looking bigger, back when it was decked out in dark stained wood trim and yellow tile.

Taken from the west entrance window, with the doors inside. Something looks to have fallen from the ceiling into the lobby floor. This picture predictably didn't turn out with all the conflicting reflections. And there's me in the middle, with a door for my head...

Looking through the back southwest door, into the kitchen area, past the restroom doors. Conveniently left open, to cut down on the time needed to get where you need to be after eating McDonald's food.

And that's about all there is to say about this McDonald's. 

It's done. It's fairly clean. 

But it's location is somewhat hidden from higher traffic roads, and it's future as any sort of restaurant is highly unlikely...

******

As a bonus to this story, here is the vacant lot left behind by a former Total gas station and car wash that closed in the early oughts, and was demolished in 2005.

Twelve years later, the lot is overgrown, offering little clue of it's former life as a gas station. It is located between the former Safeway and the former McDonald's.

I don't have anything else to add. 

So I'm going to go eat...

But not McDonald's...