Check out the Plymouth Center, a retail shopping oasis conveniently located off of Highway 55
Oh dear. What have we here? Could this possibly be the quintessential Dumpy Strip Mall? The Dumpy Strip Mall to end all DUMPY STRIP MALLS?
Let’s see…
Empty store fronts? CHECK.
Deserted, weed-choked parking lot? CHECK.
Crumbling architecture from 40+ years years ago? CHECK.
Businesses putting “Yes! We’re Open!” signage in the window to attract uncertain customers? CHECK
A dump truck staked out in the parking lot? CheckMATE.
This strip mall looks like it belongs on Coon Rapids Blvd, but no. It’s located off of Highway 55, in the #1 Best Place To Live: Plymouth, Minnesota.
When Money Magazine handed out the awards, apparently they overlooked Plymouth Center
Obviously, it’s attractions like the Plymouth Center that consistently boost Plymouth to the top of Money magazine’s “Best Places To Live” list.
Just as I suspected, there is no information about this place. I can’t give you the juicy details about when it opened, what stores used to be here, and what the future holds for this place. But I doubt anyone cares. I mean, look at it! This isn’t the kind of place where we’d see protesters chaining themselves to the building in hopes of saving the mall.
What’s amazing about this place is that it’s still standing. What kind of prize-winning city would let such this roadside shithole take up valuable real estate space? The entire mall is a gross disregard of Money Magazine’s award, yet somehow, some way, it’s still here.
Plymouth Center looks like a throwback to old skool 1960′s Plymouth, before it became a suburban nightmare with all the soccer moms and copy-cat businesses seeping in. Back when the town was made up of farmland, split level housing, and those zany Church Basement Ladies. Looking at it now, it was built at the wrong time and probably peaked at the wrong time. It’s kind of like the sad story of the guy who peaked in high school who had the fancy car, dashing good looks, and was dating the entire cheer squad. He’s 47 now, in prison.
This strip mall is completely abandoned, despite the welcoming signs in the windows.
Tenants were:
Java Express
Forster’s Meat & Catering
Insomniac Beads
Hair Designs
And Seattle Sutton’s, a unmanned weight loss clinic claiming to be open, with a name that sounds more fitting of a Roller Derby team. You know you’re at a dead mall when a business needs to put “Yes! We’re Open!” signage in the
The decals say YES, but the empty parking lot and locked door say NO
window to attract customers. But when a business has said verbiage in the window and is closed…well, then what?
Really, what the fuck? Seattle Suttons employees too lazy to peel off a few window decals? Think of the all calories that could’ve been burned and the lean muscle mass that could’ve been built. Then again, I’m guessing that Seattle Suttons is one of those “fuck exercise!” diet clinics, and tells its dieters to simply load up your freezer with their frozen shit and watch the pounds melt off. Then they scare you into thinking that the only way to keep the weight off is to keep buying their TV dinners or in a few short years, you will need to be lifted out of your house via crane.
It doesn’t look like this retail blemish will last much longer, with the menacing dump truck chillaxin’ in the parking lot. There are no “For Lease” signs on the premises, so it doesn’t look like commercial real estate agents are out pounding the pavement, trying to sell space in the building. The future doesn’t look rosy, but for all I know this primitive strip mall could still be standing intact five years from now.
If you have any war stories about the Plymouth Center (and I doubt anyone does), feel free to post in the comments!
Photos taken July 2009
#1 by Leah on August 12, 2009 - 8:54 am
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I’m curious if this is located at the corner of 55 and 101? If so, I can tell you stories about it. (which might be boring to you, but entertaining for me. LOL)
#2 by Emily on August 13, 2009 - 1:27 pm
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I grew up not far from here and it has been like this FOREVER. The only reason it is still there is that there was an awesome pizza place- Latuff’s- in here until earlier this summer when they moved across highway 55. I would guess it’s coming down soon…..
Oh- and this is located by South Shore Drive and Medicine Lake.
This site cracks me up, BTW.
#3 by Wayzata Dave on August 14, 2009 - 7:01 am
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This “Mall” was abandoned a couple of years ago for “redevelopment”. Forrester Meats was a good butcher shop – if you’re into decaying flesh for food. They had a pretty decent client base judging from the parking lot.
Anyway – back to the redevelopment – Since the 1990′s the city has been studying how to straighten out CR-73 and redevelop this area. They paid a couple of hundred grand for a study that showed they would need to buy like 20 parcels of land and the mall to do what they wanted… The reason that the number of parcels is so high is that they were afraid neighboring land values would decline due to the construction of a new road next to them.
After all the money was sunk on the study in like 1999 or 2000 the council voted to table the issue and then come back to it later… Later turned out to be 2007 – right before the recession. I believe that they had found a developer who bought the mall and was going to start demo as soon as all stores were out. Lattuff’s was the last one out in 2009. So hopefully this will meet the wrecking ball soon. But given the number of vacant retail store fronts I don’t have much hope for this…
Problem is that as one council member put it in 2000 – “There isn’t a long list of people or businesses that want to be in that location!”
Wayzata Dave
#4 by Twigz on August 17, 2009 - 12:20 am
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Plymouth Center is indeed doomed for destruction. Like the Mr Gas before it, it will soon be leveled.
I’m glad that LaTuffs moved. While in this strip mall it seemed to have pretty poor business. I never saw many cars in front of it. It moved across to the old building that was once the Hunan Buffet and now its parking lot is always full during dinner hours. Good for them!
With the slow economy, I imagine that it will be a while before a new building is created and filled with new stores. I almost think that retail is not the best thing to have there. Im sure there are other businesses that are not consumer-based that could do well there. It’s just not a prime location anymore.
#5 by DeKay on August 17, 2009 - 7:26 pm
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Funny, I just drove by there two days ago and felt it was awfully pathetic.
WTF is Seattle Sutton’s anyway? I knew that franchise was a born loser.
Anyway, great site, I found it looking up Krispy Kreme. As an unemployed HVAC guy I have been on quite a few of these mall roofs. I wondered how they survived when the economy was thriving. It look as though just barely.
#6 by Drew on September 16, 2009 - 10:36 am
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Hey, is that Famous Dave’s in the background an old Red Barn hamburger joint?
#7 by Lesley on December 19, 2009 - 5:01 pm
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Just an FYI – the Seattle Sutton space is a distribution office for the “healthy eating” plan’s food – yes, it’s pre-made meals though not frozen and yes some people use it as a diet. Customers pick up meals twice a week in the afternoons – that’s the only time the office is actually open. A couple weeks ago when I drove by on a Thursday night the lights were on. I bet they stay until the mall is demolished since they have a specific customer base. Their main office is somewhere in New Hope. I used them for about 6 months in 2007 because I hated to cook in the place I was renting.
#8 by Jesse on March 13, 2010 - 9:40 am
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I grew up about a mile from this strip mall. In the late 80s it was a very busy place, with a Janssons’s IGA supermarket (put out of business by the opening of a Rainbow Foods on 55 in 1991), a Hardware Hank, a coffee shop, a barber, Latuffs (perhaps the best pizza joint on the planet), and others. But yes, everything is gone now and the place is in decay. The lot currently gets used by random people parking cars for sale facing the highway.
#9 by Olga on May 25, 2010 - 4:25 pm
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I drive by this place every day on my way from work to daycare. It’s is so depressing!!!
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#10 by RichieJ on July 22, 2010 - 7:20 am
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I still remember stopping here in ’88 and using the talking Coke machine out in front of the supermarket. Would sometimes stop here after playing youth baseball at the fields east of here.
#11 by s1500 on August 16, 2010 - 3:06 pm
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I used to work across the street from here. Yes, it was quite depressing. Good ‘ol Hunan’s, wow was that place run donw. You forgot to mention just about 1000 feet away is some old 1800s looking barn/shack thing.
#12 by Steven Appelget on August 16, 2010 - 5:33 pm
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The Foresters used to be an IGA. Next to it was an old Ben Franklin store–good selection of candy at the time. Further down was a drug store of some kind and (I think) a dry cleaner. Around the western corner there was a creepy/neat barber shop.