Southeast Michigan Retail: Motor City Retail History

The following is a SMR:MCRH Contributor Post. This post will look at retail in Dearborn, Wayne County, MI. Target #279 15901 Ford Road, Dearborn, MI Driving distance and time from downtown Detroit: 10.2 miles, approx. 16 minutes This store tour comes to this blog with grateful permission from Reed-Y4123 Explorations of the DeadMalls community on Discord, whose photos I'll be using in this post. Right in the center of the city of Dearborn, not too far from it's two downtowns, Fairlane Town Center, Ford Motor Company's world headquarters and The Henry Ford, and just a half mile south of the Dearborn-Detroit border, lies this Target store. With all that within reasonable distance, you'd think Target would've applied their sleek, modern and upscale looks of their latest design to this store. Unfortunately, you're wrong. The Dearborn Target is an ultra low volume store - small, no-frills and untouched in 18 years. These facts are quite surpris...

This post will look at retail in Southgate, Wayne County, MI. Arbor Drugs #213 / CVS #8213 13545 Eureka Road, Southgate, MI Driving distance and time from downtown Detroit: 15.1 miles, approx. 20 minutes This store, located in the Southgate Shopping Center in it's own building not attached to the strip, was to have opened under Arbor Drugs ownership, but when serious planning got underway, CVS bought out Arbor in 1998. Construction began soon after, and this store opened as an Arbor store under CVS ownership with Arbor signage on April 5, 1999, as CVS #8213 (CVS added an 8 in front of the former Arbor store numbers). The Arbor branding was fairly short lived, as CVS signage would quickly replace it by 2000. In this photo we can see the north wall of this unusual store. This store was built with a variation of the architectural design that typical Arbor stores were built with in the late 1990's. Here's a wider shot of the north wall. Now let's h...

A view under the canopy of the Southgate Shopping Center, with a mixture of active businesses and defunct businesses. In the background is a former Farmer Jack now active as Downriver Gymnastics. This blog began in 2013 with a Southgate Shopping Center photo and this new era of this blog will begin with a Southgate Shopping Center photo. Under this blog's old name - Hudson's, Farmer Jack, Cunningham's: A Retail History of the Motor City - I had a goal to document as much of Metro Detroit's retail scene as I could. That is still the case under this blog's new name - Southeast Michigan Retail: Motor City Retail History - but I will also cover much more modern day retail developments to broaden my focus. In the six years that this blog has existed, Metro Detroit's retail scene has evolved very significantly. Tons of new retailers have opened up shop within the city of Detroit as it recovers from years of dilapidation. Once no-man's land for retail cha...