Southeast Michigan Retail: Motor City Retail History

The following is a SMR:MCRH Contributor Post.   This post will look at retail in Melvindale, Wayne County, MI. Rite Aid #4685 4016 Oakwood Boulevard, Melvindale, MI Driving distance and time from downtown Detroit: 10.7 miles, approx. 16 minutes This week's post takes us to yet another Rite Aid store courtesy of Former Retail Employee/Y4123. Rite Aid opened this store, located right in the middle of Melvindale's small downtown area and just a stone's throw away from the Detroit city limits, the Ford River Rouge Complex, and previously-featured-on-this-blog Best Buy #1406 , on May 11, 1997. Just recently, this store's exterior, just like an increasing number of Rite Aid stores, received an exterior remodel that saw the removal of the original blue entrance awnings and their replacement with the new logo. Not all awning stores that got the new logo had their awning removed, though, as exemplified by store #4545 in Wyandotte. At first glance, though, you'd think the in...

    This post will look at retail in Wyandotte, Wayne County, MI.   Rite Aid #4545 1998 Biddle Avenue, Wyandotte, MI Driving distance and time from downtown Detroit: 10.9 miles, approx. 23 minutes Located not far off from the heart of the Downriver community of Wyandotte at a prominent intersection between two of the city's main roads, Rite Aid #4545 opened in it's current location in 2000, replacing a smaller downtown location inherited from Perry Drug Stores in 1995 (Perry had only just taken over that store from Revco upon the latter's 1990 retreat from Michigan, and the location had, before that, housed Kroger and then Arnold Drug stores, and is now home to Family Dollar #7558). Like most Rite Aid stores of the time, the store features the diamond-window exterior design. The store originally opened with the RA1 package, and in 2015, received a full remodel to the Wellbeing decor package (also known to some as "Wellness 2"). The exterior received a second remod...

  The following is (mostly) a SMR:MCRH Contributor Post. This post will look at retail in Garden City, Wayne County, MI. Rite Aid #4466 29447 Ford Road, Garden City, MI Driving distance and time from downtown Detroit: 17.0 miles, approx. 25 minutes   Our second consecutive Rite Aid post keeps us in the past, and indeed so inside and out. Located in downtown Garden City, just a short walk from the former site of the world's first official Kmart (recently razed for an LA Fitness) and right behind Michigan's first dining-room McDonald's (seen undergoing a complete rebuild in the foreground in the above photo, the only one in this post that I took), sits this Rite Aid, which still looks pretty much like it did when it opened here on September 11, 2000, replacing an ex-Perry Drugs (in a former National Supermarket building) less than a half-mile away on Middlebelt Road. To get the grist of how unique this Rite Aid's exterior is from others of that era, we turn to Former Reta...

The following is a SMR:MCRH Contributor Post. This post will look at retail in Taylor, Wayne County, MI. Rite Aid #4366 9155 Telegraph Road, Taylor, MI Driving distance and time from downtown Detroit: 18.1 miles, approx. 25 minutes   Welcome to another post made possible by Former Retail Employee/Y4123 and welcome to the present as we bring you to Taylor's last Rite Aid. This peaked-roof location lies at the corner of Telegraph and Wick Roads, and opened in 1997, replacing the former Perry Drugs #66 just a half-mile up Telegraph (in a former centennial A&P that now houses the Luck Star Buffet).   The exterior was recently repainted and updated to display the new logo that Rite Aid debuted earlier this year, accompanied by a direction shift for the company. It should be noted that there is a Walgreens directly across the street from this store.   The modernness stops right here, however, as we head inside, where we are sent back to 1997.   That's right, the interi...