Eldersburg Blockbuster, Last Remaining in County, Closing Soon

Carroll County’s only store, located in Eldersburg will close its doors in February, leaving the area without a place to physically browse and rent movies, TV shows and video games. 

The store will close on Feb. 19, according to a store employee. Blockbuster is situated in the Carrolltown shopping center next to department store , which is .

While this means the end of browsing the aisle, it doesn’t mean to end of renting DVD’s in the area. 

Blockbuster has four Express Kiosks in Eldersburg and Sykesville including outdoor machines at , and On the Run, and an indoor kiosk at .

Redbox is the only other option in the area, also with four kiosks including indoor locations at , and , and an outdoor location at .

Plagued by debt and overcome by changes in how consumers acquire media, Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2010.

Although Blockbuster was purchased by the satellite company Dish Network in an auction for $320 million earlier this year, hundreds of stores have closed, including all stores in Canada, with many more set to shutter in the near future.

Other Patch sites around the country have reported numerous store closings, including locations in , , and  

The first Blockbuster opened in Texas in 1985. With some 4,000 stores at its peak, it was once the leader in the video rental space, and the place to go to pick up new releases as well as classic movies, at a fraction of what it would cost to see them at a cinema, according to a .

But the brick and mortar video stores are slowly going out of business, failing to compete with Netflix and Redbox.