Anna Faltermeier/Sun GazetteMaxine Mitchem, a cashier at Red X in Riverside, has a laugh with a co-worker Sept. 30 at the store. The store is celebrating its 60th anniversary. Mitchem said she remembers coming to the store as a young girl.
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Red X in Riverside is 60 years old
By Michael Westblade
Despite the efforts of two floods, a fire and a microburst, Red X is still standing and this year the Riverside landmark celebrates 60 years of business at 2401 N.W. Platte Road.
Red X has come a long way in six decades, growing from a tiny gas station into a 95,000 square foot jack-of-all-trades retail center. And unlike a lot of stores, it’s still managed to hold on its traditions.
The glass cases in the back are still filled with the many oddities E.H. Young collected over the years, from preserved human eyes to a vast collection of bells and oriental statues and the store is still dotted with odd curios like an old wooden propeller hanging over the produce section and a wash basin from the Titanic’s sister ship over by the liquor department.
It’s the kind of store that you really have to see to believe, said Zeke Young, who took over Red X in 1999 when his father, E.H. Young, died.
“You get to looking at everything, and it’s a hard store to describe,” he said. “Once you get to looking around you can see all the history here. This is the most unique 95,000 square foot super convenient discount center in the Kansas City metro area and a museum, too.”
Over the years, the store has morphed and evolved, trying its hand at everything from furniture sales to automotive work, said Mike Boaz, retail director, but one thing that has never changed is that sense of tradition.
“We change, but there are things we don’t change,” he said. “That’s what makes us unique. We change but we don’t change our history. The vending machines at the front of the store, we locked in the price of a can of soda at the same price as 1993: 35 cents.”
The only thing that really changes about the store is its size and now Red X sells everything from tools to groceries and then some. The store also boasts more than 4,000 different kinds of wine, Boaz said, and just about every kind of imported beer that’s available in the area.
And it’s going to keep getting bigger. Young said he plans to continue to expand the grocery section and the deli this year. But even as the store continues to grow, Young said it won’t really change.
“Some people go with new and improved, but we’re just Red X and we just stay with the flow,” he said.
For the store’s 60th birthday, Red X is going to be giving away $6,000 in gas cards during the month of October. And in a style you would expect from the store who built a replica of the Kansas Speedway out of 300 sheet cakes of brownies for a promotion, the contest display is a stack of 33, 55-gallon drums in the middle of the store, an approximation of the amount of gas that $6,000 would buy.
Staff writer Michael Westblade can be reached at 389-6636 or michaelwestblade@npgco.com.
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Red X has come a long way in six decades, growing from a tiny gas station into a 95,000 square foot jack-of-all-trades retail center. And unlike a lot of stores, it’s still managed to hold on its traditions.
The glass cases in the back are still filled with the many oddities E.H. Young collected over the years, from preserved human eyes to a vast collection of bells and oriental statues and the store is still dotted with odd curios like an old wooden propeller hanging over the produce section and a wash basin from the Titanic’s sister ship over by the liquor department.
It’s the kind of store that you really have to see to believe, said Zeke Young, who took over Red X in 1999 when his father, E.H. Young, died.
“You get to looking at everything, and it’s a hard store to describe,” he said. “Once you get to looking around you can see all the history here. This is the most unique 95,000 square foot super convenient discount center in the Kansas City metro area and a museum, too.”
Over the years, the store has morphed and evolved, trying its hand at everything from furniture sales to automotive work, said Mike Boaz, retail director, but one thing that has never changed is that sense of tradition.
“We change, but there are things we don’t change,” he said. “That’s what makes us unique. We change but we don’t change our history. The vending machines at the front of the store, we locked in the price of a can of soda at the same price as 1993: 35 cents.”
The only thing that really changes about the store is its size and now Red X sells everything from tools to groceries and then some. The store also boasts more than 4,000 different kinds of wine, Boaz said, and just about every kind of imported beer that’s available in the area.
And it’s going to keep getting bigger. Young said he plans to continue to expand the grocery section and the deli this year. But even as the store continues to grow, Young said it won’t really change.
“Some people go with new and improved, but we’re just Red X and we just stay with the flow,” he said.
For the store’s 60th birthday, Red X is going to be giving away $6,000 in gas cards during the month of October. And in a style you would expect from the store who built a replica of the Kansas Speedway out of 300 sheet cakes of brownies for a promotion, the contest display is a stack of 33, 55-gallon drums in the middle of the store, an approximation of the amount of gas that $6,000 would buy.
Staff writer Michael Westblade can be reached at 389-6636 or michaelwestblade@npgco.com.