Talk:Summit Place Mall

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This article is part of WikiProject Dead Malls, which is an attempt to better organize and unify articles relating to defunct and distressed shopping malls, otherwise known as dead malls. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.

This was the place to be when I was a "tween" and teen in the late 80's/early 90's. I was recently back there, and very saddened to see the mall nearly vacant. I would estimate that occupancy is less than 50%. There are lots of mom and pop type stores stuggling to make it, and some space has been rented out to the community (Lakeland Players Theatre, Waterford Friends of the Arts, etc.) Overall, this mall and the surrounding shopping complex is an eyesore. I hope the site can be redeveloped eventually, but do not hold high hopes. Pontiac and Waterford are quite economically depressed, and those residents with disposable incomes seem to prefer Great Lakes Crossing, Twelve Oaks, and Somerset Collection. In my opinion, the last thing that area needs is more shopping. How about more greenspace?

I went through and corrected some minor spelling/grammar/factual errors - for example, the Office Max in Summit West is still open.

As for the fate of Summit, I'm not positive. The place did very good business up until about 2000, but the loss of Service Merchandise and Ward's hit it hard. A lot of specialty stores (Auntie Anne's Pretzels, for instance) went to Great Lakes Crossings, too. When a place empties out like that - and this is especially true if you knew what it was like before - you don't want to shop there. It's depressing. Some of the stores inside and outside the mall do a good amount of business - Best Buy, Kohl's, J.C Penney, Target - but the rest are pretty dead most of the time.

Also, the article talks about the mall's layout and how it is not conducive to good traffic flow. I quite agree - getting to Sears from Kohls requires more walking than it should.

All in all, my money's on the place being closed up by 2010. There's more real estate than there are retailers in the area, and hardly enough shoppers with sufficient disposable income to keep many of those retailers in business. The place's lack of access to a major freeway doesn't help at all - it forces the mall to rely on local business rather than catering to shoppers from Troy or Rochester or what have you.

Fedallah 01:30, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Recent activity

One anon user came through and made many small edits - User:24.231.174.249. Due to the sheer number of them I haven't had time to go through them all and check their merits. I probably won't have time for a while here, but I'll get around to it. Fedallah 00:20, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm the anon user of which you speak. I will double check anything I added; I do know that Main Street became Kohl's in 1989. I do have a 1989 phone book which lists a Main Street at Summit Place, so the new wing must have opened in early 1989, just before the chain was acquired. 24.231.174.249 02:00, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, all of the factual stuff looks good. I was more concerned about spelling/grammar/formatting and so forth, I'm somewhat anal about those things, but that was mostly no worries too. Fedallah 02:20, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

On a side note: this article need photos. At least one. Fedallah 02:43, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Crime and Summit Place's demise - dubious

There is a bullet point within the article that attributes crime from Pontiac as a factor in the decline of Summit Place as a viable retail establishment. Whether or not this is true has yet to be determined; I need to go through and find/analyze data, and would like to show it to other interested parties as well. Whether or not crime from Pontiac played a role cannot be determined - it could just have easily been crime from Waterford, or it may not have played a role at all. I hypothesize that it did, but there is no telling until I have time to look at numbers and figures (hopefully pretty soon). Fedallah 21:12, 16 October 2006 (UTC)