Garfield Township -
Cherryland Center (
location) is finding new life in some unique ways. Originally opened in 1976, it was the first modern indoor shopping mall in northern Michigan. It boasted about 40 stores and was a very popular destination in its first few decades of operation. When the nearby Grand Traverse Mall opened in 1992, it drew a lot of business away from Cherryland Mall. It was eventually rebranded as Cherryland Center and it was converted to more of a strip mall / power-center type development, but business started to dwindle for many of the usual reasons (online shopping, over-saturation, competition from other malls & big box stores, etc.). As recently as 2015, the "mall" was still anchored by four major (though ill-fated) chains - KMart, Younkers, Sears, and Big Lots. Three of the four are now gone, and the last remaining anchor - Big Lots - has a pretty uncertain future. The fate of the mall seemed destined to follow that of countless others around the country.
All that is pretext to today, where the mall now features some pretty unique tenants including: Traverse City Philharmonic, Traverse City Curling Club, K1 Speed (indoor Go Kart racing), several drive-thru coffee shops, TC Man Cave (a men's hair salon), a mexican restaurant, and live theatre perfromance space (Mashup Rock & Roll Musical). Planning commissioners also recently approved an updated comprehensive development plan to help guide parking, signage, stormwater management, and access drives, as the site continues to be developed. Soon to join the list of tenants could be
Two Brothers Dog Park Cafe and Taphouse, set to begin construction next month in a portion of the former Younkers department store -
Source:
The Ticker