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

[mwilbert]

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.

Which isn't saying much.

[jtf1972]

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

Is it really "coming back" if it was vacant to start? Maybe I'm missing something, but I have seen many brand new strip malls in the suburbs open with one or two businesses and never have anything more than a lease sign in the others. Yet more will be built in close proximity, simply repeating the same pattern. That my friend, is modern suburban progress... Yet if the exact same structure is built one inch inside the border of Detroit many will point to it as an absolute failure if not at 100% occupancy, and by stores that they see as of a certain class [[which will then bring comments of how long until they close.)

[313WX]

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 is right.

That entire stretch of Gratiot is a shell of its former shelf.

It's another reason why I'll likely just end up cutting all of my losses and move to a new city. Much of the Detroit I loved is gone and won't be coming back.

[Hermod]

Hermod is right.

That entire stretch of Gratiot is a shell of its former shelf.

It's another reason why I'll likely just end up cutting all of my losses and move to a new city. Much of the Detroit I loved is gone and won't be coming back.

Many years ago, I lived just off Schoenherr between 7 and 8 Mile. I was newly married, and my wife and I used to stroll over to the Gratiot-7 Mile shopping district to shop [[or sometimes on Sundays just to window shop). I am not sure that I would walk around that area now.

The guy out in Wixom built that mall on a speculation that the real estate boom would continue in that area. He lost the bet [[and I would assume a considerable sum of money). If [[very big IF) the metro area economy turns around and the builders begin building again, that mall [[which seems quite attractive from the video clip) may fill up with stores.

[Zaiko]

For the first minute I thought this was a parody of Kenneth Clark's Civilization series aired in 1969 on the BBC.

Our man from Oakland County has us believing he's a deep intellectual, educated in classical literature, architecture, art and music.

[Detroitnerd]

Hey, just take the advice of Craig DeRoche, and stop building all those roads out there. There's obviously not the demand for all that infrastructure.

“We need to build roads where people live, work and pay their taxes,” instead of “fixing roads where people used to live, or where we want them to live.”