I'm at a beautiful, beautiful strip mall in Oakland County.

[antongast]

Well, I'm not, but the tea party reindeer guy running for Thad McCotter's Congressional seat is, and boy howdy, is he ever enthusiastic about it. If only those damnable Kenyan anticolonialists up in Washington would turn the sprawl faucet back on...

[Pickford-Bentler]

Overbuild and they won't come.

[iheartthed]

I love how you would get the sense from watching this that abandoned buildings in Michigan are a new phenomenon.

[jtf1972]

Dear Mr. Bartfolio,

The beautiful, beautiful vacant strip mall that you showcase that is near a beautiful, beautiful vacant strip mall by a beautiful, beautiful nearly vacant strip mall located just a tad up north from another underused strip mall that is not as beautiful, [[but is beautiful in a way that only a strip mall can be termed "beautiful," is the product not of over-regulation on part of the Federal government, but of overbuilding.

The simple fact is that with everything so sprawled out there is more space for business than there is business! Even if every single regulation on business, every single federal tax on business was set to 0% and taxes on everybody with an income over $100 million was set to 0%, it still would not fill up those beautiful, beautiful strip malls. It could however, mean we'd see more of their beauty where green fields and trees now stand. Yet another empty parking lot to gaze upon in all of its glory.

[[After watching I was shocked to see that it is only 2:13! Elect this guy and he can be the designated filibusterer, with only one paragraph of material!)

[Johnnny5]

Yikes! Thank you for posting this! Since we are both Milford residents I'm sure I'll end up running into this guy around town. At least now I have a face to go with the craziness and can move to the other side of the street.

[jtf1972]

Is it too late to get Glenn Moon on the ballot?

[poobert]

He strikes me as your average Oakland County beautiful, beautiful, beautiful sprawlburb resident.

Of course it was the gub'mints fault....not the fact that we've build hundreds of thousands of beautiful, beautiful, beautiful stripmalls out to no where.

Neo-classical...the Republicans are eating their young. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

[wolverine]

I'm going to tell the couple dozen retail stores, and the brand new high end department store in my neighborhood that they should have never opened in the past few years, because of the federal government. What would Bentivolio say??

They opened because there was demand. Business is booming in some places and not in others. It's that simple. If we look long term, that mall will probably never be useful. It's becoming as dated as enclosed shopping centers. I wonder what his reaction would be seeing businesses open up in downtown Detroit.

[DetroitPlanner]

I am fairly sure that is at Grand River and Wixom. If the idiot who owns the development checked the market first he would realize that area is already over-stored and under-homed.

He does not deserve a vote if he thinks that passes for quality. He is certainly a lowest common denominator type.

[tvaspen]

Strip malls beautiful? These things are the bane of american civilazation. Shitty, faux architecture, absorbatant leases, zero personality. No thank you, I'll continue to do business out of my funky old Berkley store front. It cracks me up how these assholes claim to hate the Gubmint, but will lie and cheat to be part of it.

[compn]

strip malls are terrible.

[Detroitej72]

He says he just returned home from Iraq? He seems a bit old for combat duty, perhaps he was a highly paid, private contractor?

[Johnnny5]

I am fairly sure that is at Grand River and Wixom. If the idiot who owns the development checked the market first he would realize that area is already over-stored and under-homed.

He does not deserve a vote if he thinks that passes for quality. He is certainly a lowest common denominator type.

I think you're right about the location. He mentions in the video that it's been vacant since 2008, but if that's the same place it does not seem like it's been there that long.

[poobert]

I want sociologists of the future to see this:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=90asEtTMTm4

http://www.deadlinedetroit.com/artic...unk_in_detroit

Dear Oakland County:
That is not neo classical. This is neo classical:
http://www.detroithomemag.com/Detroi.../Neoclassical/
You should come by sometime.

[Detroit Stylin]

But but but .....only DETROIT has massive abandoned buildings and Oakland County- the economic engine of the state- is the land of milk and honey with beautiful....beautiful....architecturally significant strip malls....

[Gistok]

Neoclassicism [[from Greek "neos"-νέος, Latin "classicus" and Greek "ismos"-ισμός) is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome. The main Neoclassical movement coincided with the 18th century Age of Enlightenment, and continued into the early 19th century, latterly competing with Romanticism. In architecture the style continued throughout the 19th and 20th centuries and into the 21st.

[Scottathew]

It's beautiful; it's just like a mini-mall.

[black gold man]

I was in Florida in 1990 and wondered why so many vacant properties.
Now i know.

[Hermod]

But but but .....only DETROIT has massive abandoned buildings and Oakland County- the economic engine of the state- is the land of milk and honey with beautiful....beautiful....architecturally significant strip malls....

I would give that mall a better chance of coming back than the Gratiot-7 Mile shopping district.

[Bham1982]

I would give that mall a better chance of coming back than the Gratiot-7 Mile shopping district.

This is true. I don't like that corner of Oakland County [[I find it very ugly), but it's a great location, right on I-96. It will come back, as the area is growing and more affluent than ever.

[Mackinaw]

This is one of the funniest videos ever, for so many reasons.

[poobert]

I would give that mall a better chance of coming back than the Gratiot-7 Mile shopping district.

What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? Non-sequitur, awesome. At a loss for something meaningful to say or contribute? Take a pot shot at someplace random in Detroit.

The ironic thing is that corner is home to a Mike's Fresh Market, which has a couple locations of excellent grocery stores in Detroit. There is also a US Post Office, Church's Chicken [[who doesn't like Church's, c'mon) and between Six and Seven Mile there is this church, which is something of truly beautiful the likes of which Mr. Whoever he is has apparently never seen otherwise he wouldn't be tossing the term around so flippantly: http://www.g1limited.com/news.php?id=113 and well-attended, too.

[Gistok]

What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? Non-sequitur, awesome. At a loss for something meaningful to say or contribute? Take a pot shot at someplace random in Detroit.

The ironic thing is that corner is home to a Mike's Fresh Market, which has a couple locations of excellent grocery stores in Detroit. There is also a US Post Office, Church's Chicken [[who doesn't like Church's, c'mon) and between Six and Seven Mile there is this church, which is something of truly beautiful the likes of which Mr. Whoever he is has apparently never seen otherwise he wouldn't be tossing the term around so flippantly: http://www.g1limited.com/news.php?id=113 and well-attended, too.

Hermod has been around long enough to remember when the Ramona was still a movie palace [[and not a parking lot), the City Barber College was full up with buzz cuts... Montgomery Wards was busy with Saturday shoppers even in the annex, Robert Hall was the place to get men's clothing at a discount, Federal's [[before the Steve West fire sales), and all the other smaller stores that made up A COMMUNITY.... now all we have left are a few shells, some fields... a chicken shack and a church...

So yes.... a lot of members on this forum have seen otherwise... and what's there now is sadly hardly worth defending...

[black gold man]

I have family resting at Assumption Grotto and i got one of my dogs at
the Church's Chicken a mini black wennee dog. She was all backed up with
chicken bones.
And i still run a window AC i got at Fretter.


BGM

[Hermod]

What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? Non-sequitur, awesome. At a loss for something meaningful to say or contribute? Take a pot shot at someplace random in Detroit.

The ironic thing is that corner is home to a Mike's Fresh Market, which has a couple locations of excellent grocery stores in Detroit. There is also a US Post Office, Church's Chicken [[who doesn't like Church's, c'mon) and between Six and Seven Mile there is this church, which is something of truly beautiful the likes of which Mr. Whoever he is has apparently never seen otherwise he wouldn't be tossing the term around so flippantly: http://www.g1limited.com/news.php?id=113 and well-attended, too.

I probably spent a lot more time in the area of Gratiot and Seven Mile than you have. That was one of the regional "strip malls" of Detroit. The only difference between that and a suburban strip mall was the parking lot. I also remember the "strip malls" of Detroit on Houston between Kelly and Hayes, around the intersection of Harper and Chalmers, and all along east Warren. I have watched movies in the Civic, the Vogue, the Alger, the Woods, as well as the Ramona. I have shopped in most of the east side and can remember the vibrant stores that were there. Now they are pale shadows of what they once were with only a few wig shops and other low rent operations surviving among the abandoned store fronts.

I say again that the mall out in Wixom, a victim of the 2008 meltdown, has a brighter future than the neighborhood retail of Detroit.