Farmington Fuel Chronicles: Ruby Tuesday's Revenge (#9)

OCR is finally back! After an extended hiatus to focus on school and some personal issues, I'll now be posting new material every week, of which a lot will be backlogged.

I think it's a shame that so much modern development disregards existing buildings in favor of new construction. Nowadays, Krogers and former Kmarts are often demolished to make way for new stores the same size, and office buildings are built as others sit empty. Amid this wasteful trend of "tear it down and start over," it's refreshing to see the rare case of a building properly repurposed. Such is the case with the former Ruby Tuesday at 31066 W 12 Mile Road in Farmington Hills, Michigan. This Ruby Tuesday first opened in 1993, and closed in early 2020, just before the Covid-19 pandemic upended life in America.

Ruby Tuesday after closing, a clearer shot than I could find while operational
(Google Street View, November 2020)

My commute usually takes me through the busy intersection of 12 Mile and Orchard Lake Roads, and one day in the spring of 2021, I noticed a crew painting the building light gray. It turned out that a developer had purchased the Ruby Tuesday property, and was constructing a new Shell gas station on the site. While the fueling facilities were to be built from scratch, its convenience store would be housed in the existing Ruby Tuesday building.

This was pretty interesting... because years ago, there was an old Shell across the street on the intersection's northwest corner. 

(Google Street View, September 2011)

This was an older Shell, whose convenience store bore a distinctive older design shared by the Shell-turned-Valero (and later Sunoco) at 12 and Middlebelt. It was closed on-and-off for its later years before it was finally demolished in 2012, and a Burger King opened in its place.

Come summer's end, the new Shell opened in late August 2021. I decided to pay a visit when I was in the area a week or so after opening.

Remember when gas was this cheap? (September 2021)

The fueling facilities were nice, but nothing really to write home about. Twelve Gilbarco Veeder-Root Encore series pumps, typical of American fuel stations nowadays, dispensed fuel to motorists at a now-unfathomable $3.39 per gallon. 

The rear of Ruby Tuesday became the face of the new Corner Store convenience store, with an automatic door placed where the service entrance once stood.

It wouldn't be hard to confuse the address to the right of the doors, that of the office of the station's owner, for the station's address, posted above the door. (September 2021)

Inside it was... just a normal fuel station convenience store. Same spread of snacks, drinks, and tobacco at the same inflated prices. 

(September 2021)

Also inside was a Saroki's pizzeria, offering a menu of pizza, calzones, fried chicken, and sandwiches.

The convenience store only occupied half of the building - the rest was still vacant at the time of opening. The restaurant space was gutted for conversion to... something, but the doorways were still somewhat intact.

This sign advertising GrubHub certainly dates Ruby Tuesday's closing. (September 2021)

Viewing the side of the building shows the little hints of Ruby Tuesday left behind in the renovation - the diamonds above the awnings and the stylized columns. One of the side windows was cracked.

Two new price signs were installed, adorned with red LED displays and fake brick.

It's a sad state of affairs when the air machines at gas stations only take credit cards. (September 2021)

Come January, after a robbery at the corner's Marathon and some interesting developments at Mobil, signs started popping up advertising Princess Grill, a Mediterranean restaurant, as the building's eventual second tenant.

(January 2022)

Saroki's finally got full signage around the building on January 21st.

If anyone knows a deli looking for work, tell it Saroki's is hiring. (January 2022)

Fuel prices were up more than a dollar by the time Princess opened in May.

(May 2022)

Thanks for shopping Oakland County Retail!
The next post will continue the Farmington Fuel Chronicles with coverage of the recent expansion of BP in Farmington and Farmington Hills.

End of an Era - The Last Kmart in the Midwest Closes: Kmart #3841, Marshall, Mich. (#8)

As this post is published at 8:00 PM EST, November 21, 2021, the very last Kmart in the Midwestern United States is closing its doors for the last time. The chain, founded by Detroit-based S.S. Kresge and based in Oakland County, Michigan until 2006, is now without a store in the state it once called home. Following the closure of the Sears at Woodfield Mall a week prior, the Marshall, Michigan Kmart store was, at the time of its closing, the nearest Transformco-owned retail store to the company's Hoffman Estates, Illinois headquarters, 218 miles away from the office of Eddie Lampert.

The Midwest's last Kmart was in Marshall, a city of 7,000 near the confluence of I-69 and I-94 in southwestern Michigan. Located in the Marshall Plaza, a stripmall right off I-69, the now-closed store's neighbors include a Rite Aid pharmacy and a Family Fare supermarket. The 36,000-square foot store opened for business on November 15, 1990, and closed for the last time 31 years and six days later. I paid the store a visit one day prior to its closure.

At the door, I was greeted by a sign informing me that the store's pharmacy had closed, and that customer records and prescriptions were transferred to the Rite Aid eight doors down. The notice, and the store itself, both bore the new Rite Aid logo.

Also closed, but probably for longer, was the store's Little Caesars Pizza Station. All of the signage, and the restaurant itself, appeared completely intact, though blocked by shelves.

The pizza chain's logo adorns the building in a 2018 Street View image, and a Google Maps review implies the Pizza Station was open as recently as this past February. A labelscar on the building's exterior marks where the fellow Garden City-born chain once had its sign.

(Google Street View, 8/2018)

The customer service desk could have easily been original, bearing the triangles characteristic of 1990s Kmart decor. Above it was the only 2000s-era Kmart department sign remaining in the store.

Entering the store, racks of apparel, including branded merchandise from various college sports teams, separated the entrance and checkouts from a largely barren sales floor. Empty racks made up the perimeter of a massive expanse of white vinyl tile. To the right were the fitting rooms, sporting their original "red triangle" sign.

Some remaining home items adorned a few shelves to the left. Beyond them lay more shelves, though empty, leading to an empty space at the edge of the store, where the last row of shelves once stood. A couple more triangles adorned the walls, as did two emergency exits, which once led to the garden center.

In the back corner was the disused layaway desk, and a surprisingly clean restroom. The store's other restroom closed with the Pizza Station earlier this year.

What really amazed me about this section of the store, though, was what lay below the shelves for years, before it was exposed during the closing sale. Everything from price tags and item packages to product brochures and confidential Sears Holdings documents were stuck to the floor.

Try as I might, I wasn't able to remove much from the dusty floor. Most of it was stuck pretty tightly, and I even ended up tearing a Blue Light Always tag trying to peel it off. I did end up getting three early 2010s shelf price tags (one of which was for a Kellogg's product, fitting given the store's proximity to Battle Creek), and a few other miscellaneous labels.

Nearby, a large swath of the back of the store was mostly walled off with empty shelves, some of which bore 2010s-looking item signs. 

An old Samsung CRT TV adorned a display that likely had auto parts before.

After exploring this area, I proceeded back toward the apparel, where a Kmart employee donning a gray suit noticed me taking pictures, and told me that photography wasn't permitted in the store. He was unswayed when I told him my rationale, that I sought to preserve Kmart's history on the Marshall store's last day. Undeterred, I proceeded to the fixtures section, which consisted mostly of shelves, clothing racks, filing cabinets, electrical and restroom equipment.

I had no luck trying to buy old Kmart signage. I guess my fellow retail enthusiasts must have beaten me, as two employees I asked told me that they'd sold out of department signs. A third told me that the endcap signs weren't for sale. Hiding behind one such sign was an older one, dated 2014.

Before leaving, I was happy to stumble upon an old Kmart price scanner. I have fond childhood memories of these from my local store, so it was nice to see one again.

Now completely gone from its native Midwest, Kmart faces a grim future, with fewer than 20 stores to remain open at year's end. I'm glad I got to visit Kmart one last time, and document the Marshall store for my readers.

Thanks for shopping Oakland County Retail! My next post will feature an interesting conversion from a restaurant to a gas station.