Thursday, 12/11

To quote a great American philosopher, “Oops...I did it again”.

Sigh.

All this year I've been writing about a strange habit I've picked up, the habit of writing newspaper articles for the History Center, turning them in, and then promptly forgetting about them until weeks later when I open the paper and am shocked by what I see.

I'm thinking that maybe I should just stop reading the Mining Journal. That way I won't be shocked by myself.

8-)

So I'll once again re-purpose something I wrote weeks ago and then totally put out of my mind. This time of the year, we can always consider it the gift that keeps on giving.

That's okay. You can thank me later.

(jim@wmqt.com)

*****

Let’s Go To The Mall

By Jim Koski

Marquette Regional History Center

Up until the early 1970s downtown was the center of Marquette commerce. From national chain stores to mom & pop outlets, from banks to grocery stores, when you needed to buy something, including all the holiday shopping one usually does this time of the year, you went “downtown”.

That all changed when the Marquette Mall opened.

In 1971 three developers announced plans to build one of the UP's first enclosed shopping malls on the city's west side. That area of Marquette was being rapidly developed, and in the previous few years had seen the building of several major projects, including a Holiday Inn and a ShopKo store. The Marquette Mall, sitting right alongside US-41, was set to cost four point six million dollars, and in promotional materials was being labeled “a park under a roof” with plans for up to 40 stores inside and free parking for almost 2,000 vehicles outside.

Construction started on the Mall in early 1973. Just a few months later, several stores had already opened, while the Mall itself held a grand opening November 7^th, 1973, set to coincide with the public unveiling of its main anchor store, Woolworth's. To reinforce the “park” theme of the new facility, palm trees from Florida were flown in for the event, while live music was offered while shoppers explored what the mall had to offer.

Woolworth's, which took up almost 40% of the project’s total square footage, was just one of the businesses that relocated from downtown Marquette. The other mall anchor, Angeli's Super Valu, also made the move west, as did other stores ranging from Stern & Fields Clothing and Jean’s Jewelry to The Sound Center.

The opening of the mall had an immediate impact on local shopping habits. With so many stores under one roof consumers no longer had to make their way through bad weather or traffic going from store to store on Washington and Front Streets. That soon led to an exodus of department and grocery stores and other shops from the downtown area. The mall's center court also offered a gathering place for many different community activities, ranging from exhibitions by the Boy Scouts and radio fundraising telethons to a visit in 1978 by then Vice President Walter Mondale.

However, the heyday of the Marquette Mall didn't last for long. The Mall didn't have the high ceilings and wide aisles of most malls, and the store that took up almost half the space of the building, Woolworth's, only had about half the sales per square foot of other area department stores like ShopKo or K-Mart. When the Westwood Plaza expanded into the Westwood Mall in the late 1980s many Marquette Mall stores and shoppers migrated there. It was just a few years later that both original Marquette Mall anchor stores–Woolworth’s and Angeli’s–closed, and traffic in the facility fell drastically.

By the turn of the 21st century the mall had undergone several ownership changes, and large sections of it were closed off to the public. In fact, the biggest tenant remaining in the building was a car dealership run by the mall’s then-owners. Once that dealership relocated to Marquette Township, most of the original mall building was torn down. All that's left today is an empty space in the section of the building that used to be Woolworth's, along with an empty restaurant building and a still functioning car wash in what’s left of the parking lot. But during its heyday in the 70s and 80s, the Marquette Mall had a big impact. For the most part, Marquette area shoppers no longer went downtown to do your Christmas shopping or pick up whatever essentials you needed. Instead, you just hopped into your car, and you “went to the mall”.