Today I had the opportunity to walk around the remains of Midtown Plaza. Midtown was the first enclosed down-town shopping mall in the United States.
It has not aged well. Everything, even the doors, look and are dated. It’s grungy, dirty, poorly lit and almost completely empty. It is still open, but one wonders how the half-dozen businesses inside can turn a profit.
In it’s hey-day Midtown was a major destination. Anchored by Wegmans, the world greatest supermarket, two department stores, McCurdy’s and B. Forman’s (department stores as they where meant to be, not insipid chains like Macy’s or Bloomingdales)-both with restaurants, it was the main shopping venue for the city, it also housed no mean an office tower.
But it all fell to pieces in the eighties when suburban malls started to open, suddenly surrounded by impoverishment the Plaza was unable to keep tenants and fell into decline.
It’s all winding up now, the famous Clock of Nations is entirely gone, moved to a museum*. The novelty Mono-Rail is shutdown, both the original department-stores the wegmans, a third department store called Peebles and everything else… are all gone.
The only things that remain are a “urban-fashions” (read gauche) womens clothing store, a dollar store, a Radio Shack and one of those omnipresent Christian Scientist Reading Rooms.
Now The Government has announced the theft of the property, here euphamized “eminent domain” to give the appearance of legitimacy, to build the extravagant new headquarters for Paetec Communications. This will magically solve all of downtown’s problems, so we are told.
It won’t. Neither, though, will keeping things as they are.
* CORRECTION: Actually moved to the Rochester International Airport
5 Comments
I can hardly believe that midtown was ever a popular hotspot, but you are right that it is falling down. I always did like the clock of nations, but the tuba fest was boring as there were too many tuba and other such instruments and the sound resounded too much.
Oh please. Midtown Plaza was not falling down. A mook on YouTube even called it a dump. If you want to see a famous shopping mall that has not aged well at all, visit Harvey, IL one of these days. Their Dixie Square Mall is literally in ruins from almost 30 years of neglect! I live in Rochester, shopped at Midtown until it closed, and will always remember this place as a well preserved landmark. Please keep in mind that any 46 year old structure will show signs of age, even your house. I got to see the Merry Tuba Christmas concert at Midtown Plaza once and it was in 2007. I enjoyed last year´s performance. Our Clock of Nations is currently at the Greater Rochester International Airport until 2012.
Thank you for the correction about the Clock.
“Falling to Pieces” meant that the business plan came unwound.
Beside, the building actually was showing severe signs of age, no real effort was made to update the appearance of the decor and the place had a real, clear, feeling of antiquity.
You´re welcome, slacker. There were actually 45 tenants inside of Midtown Plaza before it closed. It sure did not seem that way though. As I said before, any building pushing the big 50 will show some signs of age. I guess Midtown could have been maintained a little better, but those efforts would have been pointless. I suppose it will just sit there and fester now. Mayor Duffy has no “Plan B” if PAETEC backs out and nobody else is interested in relocating their company downtown. He seems to think another hotel will make everybody interested in the Midtown Plaza block. Hotels downtown are not thriving.
Rochester is not the right size city to benefit greatly from downtown hotels, for that one needs a very big ticket destination city like New York, London, Chicago or Paris. Rochester a moderate sized city but compared to the smallest of those towns is tiny in size, population and tourist viability.
“Fixing” downtown is tricky because it suffers from several interlocking problems, which prevent it from competing with suburbs. Take European cities: no suburbs, no urban rot.