Across the Roundabout: Marshalls/HomeGoods, Farmington Hills, Mich. (#11)

The busy corner of 14 Mile, Orchard Lake Road, and Northwestern Highway, mired by construction as of late, is seeing some interesting changes to its retail scene nowadays.

Perhaps most exciting is the upcoming opening of a new bookstore on the West Bloomfield side; the former PetSmart in the Gateway Center will soon house the first Metro Detroit location of Schuler Books, a small Grand Rapids-based chain. Upon opening, it'll be the only major bookstore in Detroit's northwest suburbs since West Bloomfield's Barnes & Noble closed in 2016.

The news hasn't been so good, however, for the Hunters' Square shopping center across the road in Farmington Hills. Having already lost Gap and California Pizza Kitchen the year before, its 2022 has been marked by three major chains' departures. Buy Buy Baby closed its store in the former Borders earlier in the year, relocating to Southfield's Tel-Twelve power center. The chain's parent, Bed Bath & Beyond, will also be closing its Hunters' Square location by year's end.

The third departure was an across-the-street move, and one I never would've expected: the longstanding dual-branded Marshalls-HomeGoods store.

(March 2021)

Hunters' Square is neighbored to the east by a smaller stripmall, home to a fairly new ALDI, Burlington, and Party City, plus a former Best Buy, disused since its November 2019 closure. The two plazas were previously linked by a signalized intersection with Orchard Lake, before its replacement this year with a roundabout, as part of a resurfacing project, which I've covered extensively in a Twitter thread.

As work progressed through the summer on the traffic circle, some demolition activity began at Best Buy; the store's iconic pointed blue façade was removed in early August.

The yellow triangular lights disappeared too. (August 2022)

A new, and decidedly nondescript, façade began to take its place as the roundabout neared completion in October.

(October 2022)

Ironically enough, it was on a planned Sunday afternoon trip to Marshalls that I first learned of the space's new tenant, as I hadn't been in the area for a while, and, as far as I could tell, no public announcement was made prior to the move. It was hard to contain my shock as I saw the new Marshalls and HomeGoods signs on approach from the south.

A brown wall from Best Buy remained on the north side. (November 2022)

A note posted on the new HomeGoods's door stated that the store would open in seven days' time. I'd assumed, naively, that the existing store would remain open until the new one opened its doors, so I crossed the completed roundabout to pay it a visit, only to find that I'd missed its November 11th closing by two days.

(November 2022)

All of the store's signage was still in place, and the interior was barren, though a surprising amount of merchandise remained inside. It seemed that despite a steep clearance sale, almost all of the Marshalls stock had been transported to the new store over the weekend, though much of the HomeGoods merchandise was still there.

(November 2022)

The facade remained intact, and the marquee sign retained the store's logos. A few confused customers stopped to read the signs.

(November 2022)

Thankfully, the chain's sister store also has a location at Hunters' Square, which fulfilled my TJX needs for the evening in Marshalls's absence.

(November 2022)

This tiny TJ Maxx at the Square's south end will remain as-is, as far as I know, despite the relocation of Marshalls and HomeGoods.

Preparation work at the new store continued into the evening.

(November 2022)

A new marquee sign appeared on Orchard Lake before I returned to visit the store on opening day's night, November 20, 2022.

(November 2022)

Unlike its predecessor across the street, which had a single entrance and no divider between the Marshalls and HomeGoods sections, each half of the new store has its own entrance, and the two are divided by a wall. They're connected by two passthroughs, though, and share a set of fourteen checkouts.

Surprisingly, both entrances have manual swinging doors, and lack the enclosed vestibules typical of most TJX stores. Balloons greeted arriving shoppers, though there were no giveaways to speak of.

(November 2022)

I began my tour of the store on the Marshalls side, where I immediately noticed a more modern and spacious feel, though I was somewhat disappointed to learn that a new décor package had been rolled out to replace the one used in the old store's last renovation. I'm a sucker for the Highway Gothic font in retail décor, and I liked Marshalls's application in the old design. The new package retains the brand's usual blue-and-white color scheme, but with markedly more white space than before, though some gold accents added a much-needed pop of color. The two main fonts used in the new package bear a strange resemblance to those used in Meijer's 2010s decor.

Tell me this Franklin Gothic doesn't look straight out of a Meijer...

A bit of Highway Gothic still remains. (November 2022)

Heading north to HomeGoods, I found the passthroughs a bit narrow, especially with opening-day foot traffic volumes. I imagine this will prove a problem once the holiday season kicks off.

(November 2022)

Similar to Marshalls, the HomeGoods side was modern-feeling, marked by white walls (hardly a change from HomeGoods past) and a nice woodgrain floor, though it definitely felt more crowded. The woodgrain design extended, too, to the department signs.

(November 2022)

After a spin through TJX's newest retail establishment, I decided to walk over and take another look at the store they'd left behind at Hunters' Square. Within the week, its logos had been painted over on the marquee, and the entrance's sign had been removed.

(November 2022)

The fixtures within had been shuffled around a bit, and most of the remaining HomeGoods stock was taken across the street. All of the décor seemed to still be intact, and a few carts remained as well.

(November 2022)

New signs were posted in reference to the closure.

When will Michiganders learn that not every store ends in a '"s?" (November 2022)

I returned to the new store the next day for some more pictures.

The feather flags had blown over during the night; putting them back up was my good deed for the day. (November 2022)

(November 2022)

The typical beige plastic HomeGoods carts are in use here, adorned with a dual-brand label. Most of them were brought over from the old store, though a few of the small carts were new, with a different basket pattern.

Old (left) and new (right) (November 2022)

One of the larger carts has an older red label bearing both logos; I managed to track it down in a few minutes for a picture.

(November 2022)

This was certainly an interesting move. I'm still amazed at how quickly the store was prepared - it took less than four months to fully transform a disused Best Buy into a ready-to-open Marshalls and HomeGoods. On one hand, it's nice that the former Kmart plaza is now fully occupied, for the first time in years, but it comes with the cost of uncertainty about the future of Hunters' Square.

Thanks for shopping Oakland County Retail!