Lakeside Mall’s closure brings shock, memories for those who remember its heyday

During Christmas shopping season in the 1980s and '90s, the parking lot at Lakeside Mall in Sterling Heights was so full that cars had to park on the lawn.

In more recent decades, the parking lot was so empty that parents such as Gayle Joseph, who lives near the mall, could use the ample space to teach their teenagers how to drive.

And now it's over. On Sunday evening, the last sands will fall through the hourglass for Lakeside when, after more than 48 years, the mall is set to permanently close. Only the attached JCPenney and two Macy's stores will remain open for business.

The demise of the two-story mall, largely brought on by online shopping and the opening nearly two decades ago of The Mall at Partridge Creek that is nearby, has been unfolding for years, yet these final weeks have been laden with emotion for many who remember Lakeside Mall in its heyday.

Lakeside for years served as more than just a collection of shops along busy Hall and Schoenherr roads, but also a center of gravity for community and social life in an area of Macomb County lacking a traditional downtown.

People recall strolling the mall and hanging out for hours, watching movies in the old theater, and visiting Santa and the Easter Bunny at holiday time. Many had jobs working in the mall. And kids plunged down Lakeside's twisting indoor waterslide — long since removed.

Other memorable attractions included ice-skating rinks in various forms and a two-level video game arcade, Tilt, located where the food court was later built. (A smaller arcade could also be found within a mall store called FYE, or For Your Entertainment.)

For Joseph, a typical Lakeside outing in the mid-1980s involved packing up the kids, putting them in the stroller, walking all around the mall, visiting the play area and eating lunch at the Kerby’s Koney Island.

“It was kind of a home away from home for us,” she said. “We went there often and it was just something else to do. The beauty of it was it was a place to go all year round."

But as time went by, fewer people were going.

Store occupancy was down to just 20% when Lakeside's owner announced in May that the mall will permanently close June 30. A public sale of mall fixtures and furniture will be held at a to-be-announced date, with proceeds to benefit local charity.

Plans call for demolition of the 1.5 million-square-foot mall structure and its eventual replacement by a new $1 billion-plus town-square-type project of apartments, retail, restaurants, offices and public recreation space.

Mall walkers on farewell tours

Recently there was an uptick in foot traffic as former Lakeside shoppers strolled through the desolate mall corridors and past the now-drained center court fountain one last time.

"Oh man, the memories," said Vince Smith, 41, of Sterling Heights, who said goodbye to the mall last week along with his young son and daughter. “I grew up here. This was the place to be. ... I never thought I would see this mall go."

Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel stopped by last weekend to take his own Lakeside farewell tour.

“It was a gathering place for people, too, not just shopping," Hackel said. "People went there just to go hang out.”

Despite its recent struggles, Lakeside did manage to hang on during the early years of online shopping. It attracted then-hot tenants such as Disney, Abercrombie & Fitch, Hollister and H&M, and retained as department store anchors its dual Macy's stores (one for women, one for men), a JCPenney and, until late 2019, a Lord & Taylor. (The mall's Sears closed in 2018.)

Yet the opening of Partridge Creek in 2007 took a toll, with some popular stores such as Banana Republic, GAP and American Eagle opting to relocate to the new open-air shopping center just 2½ miles away in Clinton Township. And when Apple opened one of its coveted retail stores in Macomb County, it picked Partridge Creek — not Lakeside.

As more storefronts went dark, the mall's Panera Bread restaurant near the JCPenney became one of the last lunch-hour attractions — until it, too, closed in about 2018.

“Panera was a big draw at one point," recalled former Lakeside shopper Jeff Zaniewcki, 37, of Clinton Township. "When they (the mall) were starting to have their downturn, they were really hyping up Panera.”

Until the end

Many of the remaining stores decided to close well before the June 30 deadline. The few that were still open as closing day neared were deep into their clearance sale territory, with even the mannequins sporting price tags at the Express store.

Among the last open stores was Mr. Sam Tailor, a Lakeside tenant since the 1980s.

Store manager Candace Dallo said their business has been doing well and they are relocating to a nearby strip center. While many of their customers have been coming for years, new ones continued to discover them while just walking through the mall.

But foot traffic in Lakeside was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, Dallo said, and never fully came back.

“It is a sad thing to see it go, but there’s not much we could do," she said. “Hopefully we do well, if not even better, at the other spot.”

Lakeside Mall also is the longtime home of Detroit City Sports, a sports memorabilia and auction business.

Owner Steve Graus, 67, said the mall location was in many ways a perfect fit, as the large corridors were great for the hundreds or even thousands of people who lined up for their athlete autograph signing events.

The store opened in the Sears wing of the mall in the mid-1990s and moved to the JCPenney wing in 2004, a year that Graus remembers well because the Detroit Pistons won the NBA Championship and there was a massive autograph signing held in the mall's center court.

“When we had the signing with the Pistons, this place had about 5,000 to 7,000 people lined up," Graus said. "It was like coming out for a concert, there were so many people."

More: Lakeside Mall in Sterling Heights will close July 1: What to know about site's future

Detroit City Sports' new location will be a former Pier 1 store across from Lakeside on Schoenherr Road. Graus said he is optimistic, although not yet sure whether the new spot can handle the big autograph signings as well as Lakeside could.

“As far as the decline of the mall, I think when Partridge Creek opened, that took away some of the power stores, like an Apple Store, from coming in here," Graus said. "But we were still good for many years. I also think the internet and then finally the pandemic" were factors.

"We really saw a lot of stores that couldn’t survive the pandemic," he added. "We were fortunate. We survived the pandemic and actually got a little stronger.”

2 malls open on same day

Lakeside Mall opened on March 2, 1976. And so did another metro Detroit mall: Fairlane Town Center in Dearborn.

Each was developed by shopping mall titan A. Alfred Taubman.

Taubman presided at both malls' ribbon-cutting ceremonies that day, which featured "state beauty queens" and local high school bands, according to Free Press archives. To help shoppers navigate, the malls had uniformed staffs of all-female information guides, called "Lakesiders" and "Townettes."

Lakeside reportedly opened with 76 stores in operation and its original four anchors were JCPenney, Sears, Crowley's and J.L. Hudson. The mall's store count eventually grew to 175 in the 1980s.

Giant breakfast play structure inspired by Denny's

Some can recall playing as children in the mall's breakfast foods play area, which opened in the late 1980s and featured giant waffles, fried eggs, sausage links and a banana to climb on, along with a "bacon slide."

Steve Henri and Ron Loch, who both worked at The Taubman Co. as store designers, came up with the idea for the play area one snowy morning on their drive to work. They decided to stop at Denny’s on the way in and ordered a “Grand Slam” breakfast special, which included eggs, sausage links and bacon.

“We started arranging the eggs and the bacon and stuff on our plates, and that's how we came up with the concept,” Henri said. The Taubman company was looking for ideas of what to do with the mall's Grand Court, and Henri and Loch, who both had young kids, thought a play area made sense.

Henri said he believes it was the first soft play area in the country.

Others would follow, including a frog-themed play area at Fairlane Town Center that Henri and Loch also designed. The play areas were part of an effort to draw customers to the malls — and keep them there longer — with activities other than shopping.

Mrs. Fields cookies

Michael Johnston, 40, said some of his earliest memories from childhood are being at Lakeside Mall, where his mom would take him and his brother and sister.

Johnston, who grew up in Clinton Township and now lives in Hazel Park, said he remembers going to the JCPenney with his mom and getting stuck underneath the clothing racks and getting a cookie from Mrs. Fields “literally every single time, without a doubt.”

After graduating high school, Johnston worked at the mall for a few years before attending college, first at the Finish Line and then EB Games, which he calls “the best job I ever had.”

Johnston recently returned to Lakeside to see it one last time before it closed. He called the experience “oddly emotional.”

“It was strange because I have so many memories and such emotion attached to a place like that,” he said. “It's kind of like going into your childhood home, in a way, and just seeing what it is now.”

Contact JC Reindl: 313-378-5460 or jcreindl@freepress.com. Follow him on X @jcreindl

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Lakeside Mall brings emotional closure for many who remember heyday