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City or county property records should be public and have that info.
There are tools out there that analyze public records in a more usable format (ex. shipping records, elected representative financials)
Might be cool to have that for property records for curiosity and analysis, but I guess that might increase abuse?
Yeah, I'm happy for it to be inconvenient. Just this morning I got a spear-phishing email with my full home address and name trying to trick me into canceling a fake auto-renew subscription.
Four almost-foolproof ways come to mind
Bonus: Ask the local chamber of commerce.
ETA: Search old phone books. Ask the local librarian.
I would add old phone books and newspaper records at the public library.
The only building i know you can do that to is the old Pizza Hut buildings, they're just built different
To find the previous businesses at that address, contact the City and ask for business license history at that address. Most cities require a business license for every business that wants to operate in a city.
To find the previous construction activity at that location, contact the City (or County if it's unincorporated) and ask for Planning and Building permits at that location. Some sort of permit is always needed when something is being built, so there should be records on it.
Typically, City/County websites have a permit record database online under their Building/Planning/Community Development department. You can usually use those to search up permits for an address. To see actual plans, you would need to contact the City.
For business licenses, that information isn't normally available online but should be public record and can be accessed by contacting the City.
I tried this in my city recently and got a "We don't keep records that long".
It's for permits on a build 11 years ago...
Was pretty disappointed.
Ask random old people on the street.
Recent history would be reflected in Google Street View, but that only goes back to maybe 2011 and only for some parts of the USA.
Going further back, you can try property ownership records, or even just searching for the address online, setting the time window to before the current business came to be.
Going further back, you can try property ownership records
Important caveat that many (most?) businesses lease their space so there's a good chance the legal owner is just something like "123 Main Street Partners, LP" (often literally just the actual street address as the substantive part of the name), which won't tell you anything about what business was there. The lessee's name, however, is likely to be on some permits, so that would be another approach if the registered owner ends up a dead end.
This is a good point. Franchises are less likely to have a recognizable corporate name, if they even own the property at all. But for more established companies or long-time small businesses, the owner entity's name might be a good giveaway as to what they did.
Depends on if the building was leased. You can see ownership records as public information. If Arbies (or their franchise peeps) owned that property and sold it, it would be viewable. If somebody else owned it and leased to Arby's... that's going to be a matter of finding the person and asking them- and they may (almost certainly will) tell you to take a flying leap.
You can look up current property owners by searching county property maps as a place to start. every county I know of has very detailed county maps used by surveyors and such like. just google [your county] property map and you should find it.
in any case, at 20 years, I'd assume that building (if not that property) was always an Arby's.
I'm just jealous your town still has an Arby's.
2 of them about 2 miles apart
Sometimes you can find old arial photographs. That will show if there was a building there before.