Macomb Mall Opens Its Doors to Roseville
On opening night in the fall of 1964, families from across Roseville drove to the corner of Gratiot Avenue and Masonic Boulevard for a reason that sounds unusual today: just to walk around and look.
Macomb Mall had opened, and people wanted to see it for themselves.
It was an enclosed regional shopping center - covered, heated, and air-conditioned - where you could walk from store to store without going outside.
Detroit-based Schostak Bros. & Co. developed it, architect Louis G. Redstone designed it, and the three original anchors were Crowley's, Sears, and S.S. Kresge, spread across a site of roughly 60 acres with about 4,500 parking spots.
Roseville was a growing suburb built on the auto industry, and the Gratiot corridor connecting Detroit to Mount Clemens ran straight past the front door.
For a community that had been expanding for years along that road, a mall this size and this modern was not just a place to shop.
Early Attractions at Macomb Mall
Macomb Mall offered more than stores from its early years. It included a twin movie theater inside the mall, with entrances directly from the enclosed interior walkway.
General Cinema opened Macomb Mall Cinema I & II on December 22, 1965.
The theater gave people another reason to come to the mall, whether they wanted to shop or spend part of the evening there.
Macomb Mall also became the starting point for a restaurant chain that later became well-known in the Detroit area.
James Giftos opened the first National Coney Island at the mall in 1965. The original restaurant was small.
It had seating for about 40 people, hand-painted menu boards, and hot dogs that cost 35 cents each. It was a simple space, but it became the first location in a chain that later expanded across the Detroit area.
By the end of the 1960s, Macomb Mall had a movie theater, the first National Coney Island, and a growing reputation as a popular Friday night destination in Roseville.
The Mall Becomes Part of Everyday Life
Over the years, Macomb Mall became part of everyday life for many people in the area. Teenagers spent weekends there. Families went there for holiday shopping.
Many local residents got their first jobs there. People who worked at Sears, Kresge, Gap, and Kohl's later remembered those years fondly.
The stores in the mall became part of local memory too.
Shoppers remembered Crowley's, B. Dalton Bookseller, Harmony House Records and Tapes, Winkelman's, Hughes & Hatcher, Little Caesars, a pet store, and different sports shops.
For many people, those stores were closely tied to memories of growing up in Roseville and nearby communities. Macomb Mall attracted shoppers from across Macomb County.
A renovation in 1999 updated parts of the building and brought in new tenants. Old Navy opened that year as the first Old Navy in Macomb County.
Customer traffic stayed strong into the 2000s.
Macomb Mall's 2011 Financial Crisis
By the early 2010s, Macomb Mall was in serious financial trouble. In September 2011, a lawsuit put a number on the problem: the mall needed $42 million to avoid shutting down.
The property owner had defaulted on a loan that came due on June 11, 2011, and the mall could not pay its utility and service bills.
Creditors went to court seeking a receiver and asking for control of the mall's rent income.
Thor Equities, the owner at the time, disputed the most alarming claims. The company was current on interest payments and in talks with lenders.
But the filing was already public record. One month later, the mall went into receivership and foreclosure.
Cushman & Wakefield stepped in to manage the property, and the mall stayed open while the situation worked itself out.
At that point, the mall still had more than 100 stores and roughly 1,500 employees - a real economic presence in Roseville even as it faced serious financial trouble.
The mall that had defined shopping in this part of Macomb County for nearly 50 years was now entering receivership and foreclosure, though it remained open.
Lormax Stern Buys Macomb Mall and Moves Quickly
In May 2013, Lormax Stern Development purchased Macomb Mall.
The property was only about two-thirds occupied at the time, with a lottery outlet, a prepaid phone shop, and a worn-out discount movie theater among the remaining tenants.
The building needed substantial work throughout.
Even so, the numbers made a case for investing: about 270,000 people lived within five miles of the property, and household incomes in the area averaged above $65,000.
The company drew up a brownfield redevelopment plan covering several addresses along Gratiot Avenue.
The centerpiece was demolishing the 126,700-square-foot former Crowley's building and replacing it with a new 50,200-square-foot space for Dick's Sporting Goods.
The total investment was about $8.4 million. Macomb County approved the plan in December 2013, and the city had already signed off on it the month before.
H&M signed a 20,000-square-foot lease in 2014 and opened in October 2015. Ulta Beauty opened in May 2015. Rue21 also joined the new lineup.
By 2019, vacancy had dropped from roughly 30 percent to about 5 percent.
The Theater Closes and Then Sears Shuts Down
The redevelopment era also brought the end of two long-standing fixtures. The movie theater - which had started as a twin cinema in 1965 and grown over the years into Silver Cinemas 8 - closed in April 2015.
Roseville issued a demolition permit in spring 2016. The building had been running for roughly 50 years and covered about 50,000 square feet.
The bigger blow was Sears. In 2016, Seritage Growth Properties submitted a recapture notice for part of the two-story Sears space.
The plan called for At Home to take the first floor while a smaller Sears kept running upstairs.
That arrangement did not hold, and by fall 2017, Sears had closed the Roseville store entirely.
As of 2022, about 210,000 square feet of the old Sears space was still sitting empty.
The former Sears building was then divided among new tenants. Hobby Lobby and At Home took over large sections.
Forever 21 and Five Below also opened at Macomb Mall around this time.
Macomb Mall Today: Still Standing After 60 Years
As of early 2026, Macomb Mall remains open and operating. Lormax Stern continues to own and manage the property, marketing it as a redeveloped regional mall off I-94.
The current anchors are Kohl's, Dick's Sporting Goods, At Home, and Hobby Lobby.
Other tenants include Old Navy, H&M, Ulta, Kay Jewelers, Victoria's Secret, Bath & Body Works, Shoe Carnival, and Sephora. The mall has roughly 60 stores in total.
In October 2024, the mall celebrated its 60th anniversary with a public event.
That same month, the Eastpointe-Roseville Chamber of Commerce presented it with the Pioneer Award at the 2024 Salute to Excellence dinner.
This is not the mall that opened in 1964, and it bears little resemblance to the building that went into receivership in 2011.
It has been torn apart and rebuilt more than once, losing major anchors and a movie theater along the way. But it is still open at 32233 Gratiot Avenue in Roseville - the same address it has had since day one.
