MAY 2012 NOTE: This post was originally published in 2009. Plymouth Center will be demo’d sometime in the near future to make way for a senior housing unit and…a McDonalds. I stopped by to snap a few pics and the frontage road leading to Plymouth Center was closed. There is a small construction crew in the parking lot, so its days are probably numbered. These pics are the best that I could do:
Oh dear. What have we here?
The Highway 55 eyesore
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.
Insomniac Beads @ Plymouth Center
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.
Cup o' joe, anyone?
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
A pizza place
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 window to attract customers. But when a business has said verbiage in the window and is closed…well, then what?
The decals say YES, but the empty parking lot and locked door say NO
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.
Plymouth Center - 2009
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
Foster’s was once an IGA grocery. Next to it was a Ben Franklin store. There was also a drug store (Rexall?), a liquor store, Latuff’s Pizza (now on the other side of 55 and a little way east in the old Country Kitchen). An old timey-barber shop with combs in jars of strange disinfectant was on the far west end.
This was the only mall in the city of Plymouth back in the days when we had room to roam and the swamps were swamps not big over stated houses built on the swamps. I grew up in the first house built in the city of Plymouth and this was the only grocery store, dime store , drugstore and cafe within miles. Ridgedale was not even built and life was remarkably better back then .So dumpy to todays standards but maybe we liked it that way. Before all the upitie people moved in and took over over our town. I am only 54 so it was not that long ago. How things have changed for the worse.
Holly, I couldn’t agree more with you. It was better before all of the development. Just drove past and the building is now gone.. How sad.
I grew up in Golden Valley (moved away in 1996 at age 30). I remember shopping at the Ben Franklin there.
A friend reminded me that Schiebe’s hardware was there, too.
I drove by it today – The MALL is being Demo’ed now…. What is going up in this spot?