Secrets of the City

This is awesome. I love how the Brookdale Macy’s looks like the inside of the Marshall’s in the Hub in Richfield.

That’s an interesting blog; thanks for the link. I can certainly think of plenty around here (mostly in Burnsville) that would be good candidates for being featured on the blog.

Does Southdale count as a strip mall?

Golden Valley Commons is a total dump.

St. Anthony Shopping Center on New Brighton Blvd.

Pretty dumpy to have a strip mall in the middle of one of Minneapolis’ few urban neighborhoods.

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Oh that didn’t work at all. I was talking about the grungy strip mall with the SA in Loring Park.

Grote, I was going to say GV Commons are classy compared to Texa Tonka, and when I did a google images search, this came up. That may be a slight exaggeration.

@redisciple: You call that dumpy? Dumpy is anything along S. Robert St. in West St. Paul. That’s an endless strip mall, with multiple fast food joints and the obligatory Old Country Buffet thrown in for good measure.

Oh, I love a dumpy strip mall! Thanks for the link.

Golden Valley Commons, though, has Down In The Valley, which is so old school and marvelous it totally props up the rest of the mall. Plus: its still, like 90% full, which totally downs its dumpiness.

Texa-Tonka, though, despite my love for it, gets my vote.

I’d admit that the strip mall I was referring is more sleazy than dumpy, but I think it dump-ifies downtown Minneapolis to locate it right in the middle of an otherwise-classy area.

Why the Texa-Tonka hate…its got Ax-Man nuff said.

I think any of the strip malls on University Ave in Fridley or Blaine should have to make the “Dumpiest Strip Mall” list!!! Especially Oak Park Plaza!!!

Or Columbia Park!!

Texa Tonka also has an awesome Russian grocery store.

@redisciple: You call LaSalle classy? LOL

Besides, there aren’t many other places on the downtown fringe to gas up the car. And what’s so sleazy about it? OMG Lotus makes the best chicken curry and has been there since the late ’80s (when I used to live on LaSalle).

Unlike other strip malls that are as old, the occupancy of the Grant & LaSalle mall hasn’t changed much. The SA used to be a 7-11 but that’s about the only change I can remember. The liquor store, LGBT gift shop, the launderer, and Lotus have all been there for as long as I can remember. I think that kind of stability trumps any categorization of it as being “dumpy.”

No love (or is it hate?) for Sibley Plaza or Har Mar? You west siders are all alike! East side represent!

My crazy ex-barber has a shop in Oak Park Plaza. I don’t go there anymore.

However, there is a great Ace Hardware shop there that I patronize often.

Just down the street, a new Mexican market has opened. Going to have to stop in for some mexican candy. I love that stuff.

Har Mar isn’t so dumpy. They just got a new D’Amico (the former Firestone auto center), and the Chianti Grill is being built to where the old Ground Round used to be. There’s a new Staples in the old theater lobby, and the TCF Bank is moving out to a free-standing building near the Perkins.

Sibley Plaza has a Russian Deli, an Ethiopian restaurant, a Mexican Restaurant, a sort of odd African deli/coffee house/pool room place. It is anchored by SuperValu grocery store, if memory serves. The Queen of Sheba (said Ethiopian restaurant) is quite good. It is a cornucopia of dining experiences…

I like the Texa Tonka mall, but it’s kinda cruddy-looking. Axman is a great place for cheap gifts!

Maybe this thread should morph into cruddy looking towns because of too many strip malls. I submit any metro suburb that starts with “B”

Nothing could be dumpier than Apache Plaza before it closed. It was like a boil on the Herberger’s. One little stall / shack in the middle selling collectables. Walking through once, I literally heard plaster falling from an archway.

Hater. I miss the old Apache Plaza. True, it was never the same after the twister hit. Things never are…

Anyone else think Knollwood is oddly dumpy? Considering it’s surrounded by SLP, Hopkins, near Edina and Mtka.

@noodleman: if the mall isn’t sleazy, but LaSalle isn’t classy, how would you characterize the area? Down-home, middle-class Americana?

To me the visual character of the area is eclectically urban, until suddenly there’s this strip mall with a mysteriously humped parking lot choked with oil slicks and a cheesy green-shingled roof ornament that clashes with the futuristic racing stripes of that most dated of corporate decors, SuperAmerica. Regardless of the tenants, if the exterior hasn’t been updated in two decades, if it is the sort of place where dessicated bushes plopped in cheap rock look right at home, if most of the parking lot is taken up by gas pumps, it is dumpy.

LOLIMHOROFLPOOP!

Now can we discuss where the exact boundaries of uptown are?

It’s dumpy-looking for sure, but it’s all downtown has for gas, and since all the stores there have been in business for a good long while, local must like it.

Uptown boundaries? Depends on whom you ask. I’ve heard people refer to Mortimers and Rudolph’s (Franklin & Lyndale) as being in Uptown. The worst was a client who wanted to meet at the Starbucks “in Uptown” and it turned out she meant the one on Excelsior Boulevard. That’s across a lake and past at least a couple other neighborhoods.

Re Knollwood..

Knollwood is located square in the taint of Hopkins, SLP near the low income high rises.

For me Uptown boundaries are created by the ability to drunkenly stumble to/from Figlios/Calhoun Sq.

That Starbucks is a stretch.

Good point about Hopkin’s taint.

There’s a weird strip mall type thing off of Blake in Hopkins behind the Walgreens. It’s not only dumpy, it gives me the creeps. But any strip mall that has a “tobacco outlet” does that to me.

Not local, but the Western Mall in Sioux Falls is dumpy (it was the main mall before the Empire Mall showed up and stole Daytons).

Oh, that reminds me: There’s a dumpy little strip mall on 37th and Stinson in NE/CH/SAV.

Unique has been upgrading the one that they are in, after Top Valu moved into their own building, but there is another one just east of it that is terrible. Has a tobacco shop, a women’s clothing consignment shop, and I don’t know what else.

@rediscipline: Yes, more thought could have gone into the exterior of the Grant St. mall but it is not dumpy in the way Brookdale Center is dumpy. For quite a while, a couple of decades ago, the whole Loring Park area was suspect and sliding into the dumpster. It only started gaining ground and improvement in the mid-’90s. (Heck, there were still “resident hotels” along LaSalle when I lived there.)

I’m guessing the Grant St. mall was considered an vast improvement over what might have existed on the land prior to its construction.

Brookdale Mall is a Strip Mall? Ah, White Flight. There is no reason to fear crime in Brookdale, there is no one in there to mug you. It’s not even dumpy, it’s incredibly clean and unworn since the last remodel. I’d lick half the tiles in there.

It’s inevitable that the Barnes and Noble will close, it’s really sad. The Starbucks opening across the street helped pull people away from the BN Starbucks but that will close too.

White flight motherland is Maple Grove, it’s horrible and looks like oatmeal. I almost vomit when I drive by and god forbid I have to drive in..I’m sure I’ll get into a fender bender.

The dumpiest strip mall is that one on Broadway with the Walgreens and the Builder’s store.

The best dumpy one is in Robbinsdale, with Video Universe and Broadway Pizza. They pulled a Maple Grove on the new awning that makes it all ugly but that that place is alive. Try to go there at night without getting a “how do you do” and a compliment. The Eagle’s Nest Lounge is friendlier than the Special Olympics.

I also fear for the B&N at Brookdale, and that I won’t have a single bookstore near me anymore.

Yeah, that strip mall on Broadway and Lyndale is pretty bootleg. I remember going to grocery store there back in the late 80’s very early 90’s.

Being in Maple Grove feels like I’m on a giant movie set. It’s weird.

I third Shad and Kurtis in fearing the Barnes and Noble in Brookdale would close. I used to go to Border’s in Block E b/c it was close to my office but now I just have that store close to my house.

I stopped in a “tobacco outlet” in Blaine (near the post office) recently and discovered it was really more of a head shop masking as a tobacco outlet.

Lots of little glass pipes, roach clips, bongs and the like.

“Novelty items for tobacco” the sign said. Yeah, right!

Needed a pack of Marlboros, did you, Bob?

On topic, I second Rez’s opinion of Burnsville…I can think of two or three lousy strip malls there. The worst, as I recall, being on 42 across from Burnsville Center. Also, the one on Hwy. 13 and County Road 11 that mainly houses a pool parlor these days.

@Noodleman: Thanks for the history lesson. Your selective narrative, however, ignores the fact that some of the priciest condos in the city were built just a few blocks from the disputed strip mall in the very time period when you claim it was so dodgy.

As for your question about what was there before it was “stripped,” True North implies it was similar in character to surrounding blocks, which at the time was clapboard single-family homes. In the ‘teens those would likely have been torn down to build the apartment buildings that (I think) define the neighborhood today. Then in the seventies those apartment buildings would have been torn down and replaced with a cheap dirty strip mall that would be cursed for high-priced wine and lauded for the availability of its gas.