With a population of just over 100,000 residents, Green Bay is Wisconsin’s third largest city and the largest of the string of cities collectively called the Fox Cities in the northeastern part of the state.  Interestingly, Green Bay is one of the oldest continuously settled places in the United States, having been established as a French trading post in 1634.  Today, however, Green Bay is known primarily for its homegrown football team and economy of paper mills and other manufacturing industries.  However, the economy is far from robust, and the city is one of a few in Wisconsin losing population in recent years due to manufacturing cutbacks and negative job growth as many of the city’s historic industries invest elsewhere in cheaper labor and materials.  However, the Green Bay metropolitan area has grown by about 6 percent since 2000.

Green Bay’s retail scene has evolved quite a bit since its early days as a trading post nearly 400 years ago.  Unlike southern Wisconsin, Green Bay and the Fox Cities got on the super-regional mall-building train relatively late.  One of the first large-scale regional developments was planned to simultaneously reinvigorate downtown Green Bay from its loss of retailers to suburban strips in the 1970s, and also to give the area a super-regional multi-anchor mall.  Port Plaza Mall opened ceremoniously in 1977 featuring anchor stores H.C. Prange, which predated the mall by 50 years, and JCPenney, as well as about 100 smaller stores under one roof in the middle of downtown Green Bay.  Four years later in 1981 Boston Store opened as well as a small food court. 

The 1980s were mostly kind to Port Plaza Mall, as it retained immense popularity despite other competition being constructed nearby.  Most notably were the large malls Bay Park Square in Ashwaubenon, a suburb of Green Bay, and Fox River Mall, located in Appleton about 30 minutes away.  Both Bay Park Square and Fox River Mall opened as large-scale regional developments and were an immediate threat to Port Plaza’s customer base, opening in 1980 and 1984, respectively.  Fox River Mall, being both the most centrally located center for all of northeastern Wisconsin as well as being located in one of the most economically prosperous areas, has enjoyed the most success to date.  It has attracted a sea of boxes and category killers to surround it, and is a retail destination for all of northern Wisconsin and upper Michigan.  As an immediate response to this competition, Port Plaza Mall embarked upon a large scale renovation in 1988. 

As the 1990s began, Port Plaza still held its own and remained a destinational offering anchoring downtown Green Bay.  In 1992, anchor store Prange’s became Younkers as the former chain was purchased by the latter, but didn’t really affect much.  More numerous changes were afoot by the end of the decade, as problems emerged at Port Plaza Mall.  It seemed as though shoppers were no longer willing to go downtown and deal with parking, and much preferred shopping at Bay Park Square, which was renovated about this time, or to travel to Appleton for all the offerings there. 

In 2000, the Boston Store closed and so did numerous other national chain retailers, signaling a red flag for the mall’s prosperity and the beginning of a downward spiral.  In 2001 and 2002, the mall was sold and a few attempts were made to return it to glory.  First, the mall was renamed to Washington Commons, to reflect the new owners’ plans to integrate ‘other’ uses into the mall, like offices.  McDonald’s and Osco also jumped ship about this time, and the food court was moved to near center court while the old food court was demolished so Washington Street could be reconnected through the mall as it was before the mall opened.  In 2004, another blow came to the mall as Younkers closed, relocating to a vacant spot at Bay Park Square.  In 2005, the Green Bay Childrens Museum left the mall, and all the while more and more stores left like Bath and Body Works.  2005 also saw the last anchor tenant, JCPenney, leave the mall in October, leaving the mall with only a handful of stores. 

In February 2006, following numerous failed attempts to repurpose at least some of the mall into office space or anything useful, owners decided to kick the remaining tenants out and close the mall permanently.  They sort of had to do this, because the mall was being foreclosed upon by the bank it was financed with, and the electricity would be shut off after February and it’s mighty cold in Wisconsin about this time.  Anyway, the mall closed, but not before yours truly paid it a visit on the last day it was open.  These pictures were taken February 26, 2006. 

In Summer 2007, the Pranges/Younkers building was demolished to make way for new developments at the mall, which could include a small lifestyle/retail portion and trendy condos or something; you know the drill by now.  Take a look at the pictures and feel free to leave us your own comments and experiences at Port Plaza Mall/Washington Commons in Green Bay. 

Located in the middle of downtown Milwaukee, the Grand Avenue Mall opened in August 1982.  Part of a larger civic revitalization effort, the mall premiered downtown during a time when retail (and nearly everything else) had moved out to the ‘burbs and downtown Milwaukee was left to the 9-to-5ers and the bums.  A nationwide problem not unique to Milwaukee, the loss of downtowns across America led city planners to develop resurgence programs, and many plans offered up enclosed malls.  I suppose they figured what was working well in the suburbs at the time might work in the downtowns and save them.

The plan worked.  For a while, at least.  Many who had abandoned downtown to shop in the suburbs returned to this large, glassy, modern two-level structure.  Occupying two city blocks on two levels with a third level food court at center court, Grand Avenue Mall skywalks over a street on the second level and is split into discontiguous pieces by the street on the first level.  The 1980s and early 1990s saw the mall at near 100 percent capacity, with upmarket local stores as wel as chains such as Laura Ashley and Banana Republic. 

However, you can’t reinvent the wheel, especially in the midst of dramatically changing demographics.  As soon as the mall opened, Milwaukee’s manufacturing economy began to erode, with unemployment jumping high as more and more factories left town for cheaper labor elsewhere.  As a result, crime in the city spiked at unprecedented highs during the late 1980s and early 1990s, with the murder rate doubling in the eight years between 1982 and 1990. 

While few of these murders occurred in the heart of downtown, where the mall is located, many were too close for comfort in the poorer neighborhoods adjacent to downtown to the west and north.  As a result of these changing demographics, shoppers jumped ship and instead chose to plug their money into malls closer to where they lived, like Bayshore, Southridge, and Mayfair.  Vacancies skyrocketed at Grand Avenue in the mid- to late- 1990s.  Longtime east anchor Marshall Fields, which was previously a Gimbels flagship, decided to leave in 1997 after years of declining sales.  This sent the mall further into a downward spiral, and many stores in the eastern section of the mall (Plankinton Arcade) closed as a result.  The western section of the mall, with the large third-level food court and Boston Store anchor, fared slightly better but also eventually faltered.

By 2002 the mall was on life support.  The few stores remaning were mostly athletic and urbanwear chains, and the food court remained viable due to the large number of office workers nearby.  However, a huge breath of life came in the form of a remodel and repositioning.   The mall’s dated, early-1980s look was replaced with a more modern facade inside, and the main entrance on Wisconsin Avenue was given a facelift as well.  Management leveraged this remodeling to attract new stores, citing the recent growth of residential space downtown.  Extensive development in the third ward, downtown, and lower east side would provide a significant local retail base to give Grand Avenue viability again.  Also, crime in the city scaled back dramatically to pre-1980s figures, and job loss in the region was slowed.   

But, instead of reinventing the wheel and trying to re-establish a top-tier superregional mall downtown to compete with Mayfair, Bayshore, and Brookfield Square, management sought to instead establish a different niche for Grand Avenue.  The first step in this transformation was to rename the center from Grand Avenue Mall to The Shops of Grand Avenue.  In-line small store space was scaled down dramatically in the eastern section of the mall by replacing all of the stores on the first level and the hallway with two box stores, Linens ‘n Things and TJ Maxx.  The result is kind of interesting, design-wise.  One can look down from the second level of the mall directly into the stores, as little was done to change the old configuration other than removing the small stores’ walls.  Old Navy was also brought into the mall, replacing another large section of vacant in-line space.  Also, the vacant Marshall Fields was redeveloped into a Borders and Residence Inn and renamed ASQ Center.  Although not technically part of The Shops of Grand Avenue, ASQ Center is connected to it by the same skywalk which connected Marshall Fields. 

Today, The Shops of Grand Avenue is chugging along all right.  By no means is the center as successful as it was during the 1980s, but neither is that the current owner’s intention.  Instead, the mall functions to serve the needs of the retail base which supports it, the newer neighborhoods downtown, and the 80,000 office workers which funnel in and out of the city center daily.   The store roster speaks to this, and the food court is still as busy as it ever was.  If management continues to woo more tenants in, it could really work out.  The design features of the mall, and the way it’s hemmed in with hundred-year-old buildings, is rather unique and pleasing to the eye.

At any rate, Grand Avenue is currently the last enclosed shopping mall in the city of Milwaukee.  As of ten years ago there were three others: Southgate, Capitol Court, and Northridge, but each met its own fate largely due to the same demographic problems which felled Grand Avenue.  We took the pictures featured here in April 2007. 

With nearly 10,000 residents, Sturgeon Bay is the county seat and gateway to the popular Door County tourism region of northeastern Wisconsin.  Since the advent of the automobile, tourists have flocked from Milwaukee, Chicago, and other midwestern cities to Door County for a beautiful, relaxing vacation.  For those who don’t know, Door County is Wisconsin’s “thumb” - a long peninsula of hilly land with Green Bay on one side and Lake Michigan on the other.     

The Cherry Point Mall is a small, enclosed two-anchor L-shaped center which we like to refer to as a “sMall” here at Labelscar.com.  Because it’s pretty small, right?  It’s very typical of an ”up-north” mall, common throughout more sparsely populated areas of northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, and also very similar to many small enclosed malls in relatively isolated cities across rural America in general. 

Anyway, the mall is decently old; I’d guess it opened around 1980.  It opened anchored by a Schultz’s Family Store location which was acquired in 1989 by Prange Way, a discount department store based in Sheboygan.  Prange Way closed in 1997 with the foreclosure of the entire chain, and was eventually replaced by Dunhams Sports which is still open today.  The other anchor, which was a Family Dollar from 2002-2006, was very recently replaced with Dollar Tree in June 2007.

The decor of the small L-shaped Cherry Point Mall is relatively dated.  The entire mall is carpeted with a beige berber, and many of the stores inside have wooden facades.  Also of interest were the hanging banners from the ceiling with the mall’s name and logo, a throwback to the past and a commonplace in these little up-north sMalls.  In addition, the store roster is typical of rural sMalls as well, with a much higher prevalence of local retailers rather than national chains, with the exception of the anchors.  Also typical of an up-north sMall are the placement of the ubiquitous Hallmark and the numerous craft stores; one here is named Country Bumpkin, I think that’s all we need to say?

The pictures featured with this post were taken in July 2001.  Leave us some comments and let us know how the mall has changed in the past six years, or any other information you have - such as, when the mall opened and what the Family Dollar/Dollar Tree anchor has been over time.

Southgate Shopping Center, later Southgate Mall, was the first significant post-World War II suburban-style shopping center in the Milwaukee area. In 1949, local brewery supplier (how very Milwaukee) Kurtis Froedtert laid the framework for Southgate and three other major suburban-style shopping centers in the area, during a period of this kind of retail development nationwide. Southgate Shopping Center was the first of these planned centers which would rim the city; the others were Westgate (later Mayfair) and Northgate (Bayshore?).

Located on what was then the far south fringe of the city of Milwaukee, Southgate was not randomly placed but rather strategically situated. On one side of Southgate were the older, ethnic neighborhoods which created Milwaukee to the north and east, and on the other were vast expanses of immense suburban growth to the south and west. Also, Southgate was placed directly on Highway 41 (27th Street), which was then the major thoroughfare from Chicago on up to Green Bay and all points in between before freeways took over.

When Southgate opened in 1951, it was essentially an anchorless strip mall, with 20 stores under the same canopied roof. Yet, because this type of development was so innovative, people flocked from all over southeastern Wisconsin to Southgate. In 1954, Southgate finally got an anchor in Milwaukee-based Gimbel’s department store. Krambo’s grocery store opened on the opposite end of the center a year later in 1955, and the center retained its immense popularity. But of course this probably comes as no shock, considering there was no other competition like it anywhere in the area. Very soon, though, this would change as other similar shopping centers opened around the city during the 1950s - Bayshore in 1954, Capitol Court in 1956, and Mayfair in 1958. These centers didn’t quite steal Southgate’s thunder, but rather were peers who held their own in the respective regions of the city they covered. Southgate reigned as the dominant south side shopping center until 1970, when a monster appeared to change Southgate’s fortune forever.

Southridge Mall opened a few miles to the south and west of Southgate in suburban Greendale in 1970. A self-contained shopping environment, Southridge outclassed Southgate in nearly every way. For one, it was gigantic in comparison. Almost ten times larger than Southgate at that point, Southridge featured 5 anchors on two enclosed levels, and to this day is one of the largest malls in the state. Also, Southridge was closer to the growing, suburban-middle class population in the suburbs.

As shoppers flocked to Southridge, Southgate decided it had no other choice but to renovate (Yes, I just personified a mall here). In 1971, Southgate aggressively repositioned itself through an expansion which doubled the size of the mall and enclosed it, giving it some leverage on Southridge’s success. Southgate soldiered on through the 70s and 80s as an ancillary enclosed mall of about 500,000 feet, including anchor stores. In 1986 the main anchor was swapped as one heritage Milwaukee store replaced another, when Gimbels closed and its space was immediately taken by Boston Store.

However, any measure of success ended in 1994 when two of the largest stores occupying 40 percent of the mall closed, Boston Store and Woolworths. From then on the mall slowly deteriorated into a shell of its former self, with more and more vacancies as time went on. In 1995, Media Play and Trak Auto were to split the anchor space and help revive the mall but it never came to fruition. Then, in 1998, Southgate Mall’s ownership changed hands and the new owners announced that most of the mall would be demolished for a Wal-Mart store.

And so it was. During the Summer of 1999, most of the structure was demolished and a huge standalone Wal-Mart was put in its place in 2000. Walgreens relocated to a different side of the property and the Marcus Cinemas remained, as well as a small outdoor portion of the old mall which ironically was part of the original 1950s Southgate. This is pretty much how it is today.

As I never got to see Southgate apart from driving by, all our photos came from contributor John Gallo. The Gimbels and interior shots were taken in 1986 or prior, the Boston Store shot was taken sometime between 1986 and 1993, and the others are a more recent depiction of how the site looks today (post-1999). If you have any more pictures of the “old” Southgate, in any of its incarnations, feel free to send them in and we’ll post them.

Manitowoc, Wisconsin is a small port city in east-central Wisconsin on the shores of Lake Michigan. With a population of 34,000 and micropolitan area (with Two Rivers and the rest of the county) of just over 50,000, Manitowoc is hardly a large place. Most of its roots are in manufacturing, shipping and agriculture, and thus growth in the region has slowed in recent decades as the economy shifts from that of building things to one of building knowledge. That said, Manitowoc still maintains a retail presence, but it is important to consider that it has always been on a local scale. Being about 30 minutes from both Green Bay and Sheboygan, and less than an hour from Appleton where ample retail offerings exist, Manitowoc has never been the center of super-regional (or even regional) retail activity. Instead, the offerings in Manitowoc and Two Rivers have been just enough to sustain local shoppers, including two enclosed malls right next to each other: Edgelake Plaza, at 210,000 square feet, and Lakeview Centre.

From time to time, we feature guest bloggers here who have their own stories to share. The following entry comes to us from Matt A. (a.k.a. Matt from WI from the comments board on this site) as he tells the story of the newer of two adjacent malls between Manitowoc and Two Rivers, Wisconsin:

My home state of Wisconsin, like many other Upper Midwestern states, was dotted with small community malls of this ilk during the days of the enclosed mall building boom in the late 1960s-1980s. While the cities of Manitowoc and Two Rivers already shared the Mid-Cities Mall, which opened in 1968 and boasted a Wards, Penney’s, and over 20 other shops, most of those shops were the local / regional flavor, save for a large Woolworth, A&P and Osco Drug. Edgewater took up the slack when it opened directly across the street in 1979, bringing with it another 20 stores, most of them featuring a heavy regional / national presence. It was originally anchored on the west end by a Prange’s (now Younkers) and Prange Way flanked the eastern end, with in-line space in between. The newer more modern mall even took away some of Mid-Cities’ stores.I’m not sure as to how ’successful’ Edgewater Mall was back in its first years of life (’79-’89), but I’d imagine it did well enough when it was 100% occupied, when Wal-Mart wasn’t ‘the place’ people shopped (it was Prange Way or K-mart back then), and the local economy was still in halfway decent shape -but more on that in a moment. At least four reasons account for why this mall died: 

1 - A new interstate, I-43, opened in 1981 and finally gave Manitowoc and Two Rivers a major highway link to the major cities of Green Bay and Milwaukee, taking away consumer dollars that otherwise would have been spent locally.

2 - Location. The Mall, while located just off the lakefront on the northeast side of town, is not near the main commercial hub of Manitowoc. The southwest side of Manitowoc is the new retail strip for the area, with big box such as K-mart, ShopKo, and several strip malls that opened starting in the 1970s. While old Highway 42 (Memorial Drive) is / was the main link between Manitowoc (and points south including Milwaukee) and the Door County region, once I-43 was built (shortly after the Edgewater Mall opened), all the thru-traffic going past the mall was sucked away, and with it, the retail heart of the city swung around to the southwest at the intersection of I-43 and U.S. 151. Mid-Cities Mall, renamed Lakeview Centre in the late 1980s, already a dying mall by then, didn’t help either. That building was an eyesore already by 1979 when Edgewater opened, the bottom falling out when Wards, Woolworths and Osco all pulled out and left gaping vacancies that would never be refilled. I believe this had some crossover effect on Edgelake Plaza, especially in the past 10-15 years.

3 - Tenancy. Prange’s switching to Younkers wasn’t such an issue. Hanging onto national tenants was always a problem for small malls of under 300,000 sq ft, or so it seemed. At its peak, Edgewater had names like Id Boutique, Kinney Shoes, Kindy Optical, Regis, Deb, Brooks Fashions, an arcade, several food counters, and various other major stores, at least 20 in all. Bankruptcies and the big blow came in 1996 when Prange Way went bankrupt and shuttered their Edgewater location along with the rest of the 22-store chain of regional discount stores.

4 - Local Economy: During the World War era, Manitowoc flourished due to its shipbuilding industry. There was also the Mirro Company, and several other major manufacturers within the city providing an economic base. When all of this was outsourced starting in the late 1970s and continuing still to this day..well, you can guess what happens over time. No money to spend = retailers struggle and eventually go out of business. Such was the case here.

I’ve attatched two sets of imagery. The outdoor ones I snapped in 2004. The interior shots I took last year. You can really tell this is a 1970s mall. The outside was given a paintjob in 2002, but you can still tell when it was built by the plain boxy look of the building, and the typical vertical-slotted cinderblock details. Inside, the dark terra-cotta flooring, the low tiled ceilings, the fluorescent light fixtures instead of mecury-vapor bulbs (energy crisis in the late 1970s prompted the use of fluorescent lighting), lots of planters and wood-tone benches, and those treated-wood-style storefronts that chains like Brooks, Id, and Regis used back in 1979…very dated and a dead giveaway as to the era this mall opened. The mall only consists of one wide concourse stretching between Younkers and the vacant Prange Way, and a short hallway going to the mall’s lone rear entrance. Two entryways take up the front.

When I visited last year to take the interior pics, all that was left was a tanning studio, a NASCAR paraphernalia store, a nail salon, an eyecare/opticians office, and a Sears Authorized Dealer store that only sells Sears’ hardlines (Craftsman and Kenmore stuff).

I’m not sure how much longer this mall will last, considering there’s not much left. However it seems to still be in operational mode, because when I was there, the floors were getting buffed as you can see in the pics (they’re unusually shiny and look new), and several old storefronts were being repainted, leading me to believe maybe the new owners / management have intentions to lease space. In the end, it’s a dying, yet decently maintained little mall. Trust me, I have seen worse in the upkeep department when it comes to these smaller malls.

With most malls like this in Wisconsin having been either reconfigured into strip malls, or torn down outright, it was a nice find that Edgelake Plaza has been open long enough for me to capture an example of
what we were seeing during the mall boom in the 1970s and is today disappearing in favor of big boxes and
super-mega malls. These were not ‘regional’ malls in the sense of the term, they were community malls
(though they did serve the rural areas within the county as well), and it is quite a shame to see many of them going the way of 8-track tapes and VHS movies. They hold a certain aura and charm that the huge behemoth malls just can’t capture. It sure would be nice to see Edgelake Plaza be fully occupied again someday and thriving once again.

Thanks, Matt. We appreciate the submission. If you have any other comments, feel free to add to the discussion. The pictures featured with this article were taken by me in 2001 and by Matt A. in 2004 and 2006.

Oh, and by the way…Matt submitted an article on Wikipedia about Edgelake Plaza, and their content selectors flagged it for deletion today for not being notable enough. We here at labelscar feel it’s rather ridiculous (not to mention incredibly subjective) to try to decide which malls have notability and which do not, especially considering no precedent has been set for determining shopping center notability. Is a shopping center notable because it has a certain number of stores, or attracts an affluent customer base? What about its sheer size? Maybe it’s just notable for the people who live in the area and shop there regularly.

Whoever thinks that shopping centers, even this one, aren’t notable should thoughtfully reconsider. While Wikipedia is not the yellow pages, shopping malls are an important piece of our collective history and culture. Whether you like them or dislike them notwithstanding, they have proven themselves functionally and have a continued following. In addition, they function more than just systems of utilitarian commerce. In fact, many people do find them interesting as reflections of their own style of architecture, their varied retail presence, relative locations in our cities, and even their varying physical conditions. I would argue that in general, shopping mall articles belong in a reference encyclopedia if, for nothing else, to provide an index of these important historical agents of our collective history, our pieces of Americana. We must continue to be very careful in filtering content so that we don’t become an irrelevant collective source of information.

We don’t usually use the blog to further a specific agenda such as this, but we feel marginalized by those who essentially don’t understand the appreciation and legitimacy of retail places, and who view them as thin and not unique. To us, nearly all retail places are unique in some interesting way, and the claim of a reference encyclopedia asserting it does not wish to index every shopping center is as absurd as saying “We also no longer wish to list every city; some are just not that notable.” So, if you could go to the page and voice your concerns, that would be great. End rant for now…

July 2001

2004

2006