Midland Mall Midland MI - WaterWinterWonderland.com

Info Updates:

5/9/2023 - Michael

I grew up in Central Michigan in the 80's and 90's, and during the 80's my closest mall was the Fashion Square Mall in Saginaw. However this was a good hour and 20 minutes south of where I lived, and not all of that drive was freeway. Fashion Square even by the mid-80's had a very dated early 70's look with dim yellowish lighting and lots of "harvest colors" reminiscent of that time. So when the Midland Mall opened in 1991, it was an easy drive south all on freeway for my family, only about 40 minutes, and absolutely brand new and modern. It was also a time of prosperity for my family personally, so we used to go to the Midland Mall a lot. Growing up mostly in northern Michigan, I often times felt cut off from the modern world, and many places that big cities had. But when the Midland Mall opened, it felt like we had a brand new place to go to, that was our own piece of that. My family was there opening week, and I was blown away. To me at the time, it was nearly like having a theme park built near me. During the many months of Michigan's cold winters as well, you could go there, practically spend the whole day, and relax. You could arrive, take off your big winter coat and store it in a locker, look around or shop in the various stores, eat in the food court or the Ruby Tuesday restaurant, play games in the Tilt arcade, have your car worked on at the Sears auto center, and relax in a temperature controlled environment lined with palm trees. For me as a kid too, there were stores like Electronics Boutique for my video games, Suncoast Motion Picture Co. for movies, several music stores like Camelot Music and Sam Goody, and sports stores like Champs, Finish Line, and Foot Locker. I can remember Target being an anchor as a fairly unusual thing too for malls at the time, and we didn't have any Target stores that I remember north of Midland at the time. Target back in the late 80's and early 90's in my memory was a pretty cool place compared to most other similar stores. It had a cleaner and more modern feel to it, unlike places like Wal-Mart. So it was a very neat new place to have, and sort of served as a catch-all store at the mall where you could find a little of everything I listed above. Elder Beerman was an anchor at opening and for years too. I hardly knew this store at the time and it was new to me, but it quickly felt much nicer than some other similar mall anchors like JCPenney or Sears. Some other refreshing aspects of the Midland Mall when it opened, were the very high ceilings with lots of skylights, and its bright color scheme of whites and pastels. When the mall first opened as well, most of the immediate area around it was largely undeveloped compared to today. So it felt very open, tree-lined, and well-landscaped. In contrast today things feel very overbuilt and claustrophobic. In more recent years of malls' decline in the U.S., it's made me so sad to see Midland Mall largely become a "dead mall". I wish that I could show kids today what it was like in its earliest years, when it was like an oasis and a palace to me.

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Midland Mall - Midland MI