Bill Speer

Over the years I have had to pay more attention to shopping opportunities in a community than I expect most males my age have had to in their lives.

It isn’t that I particularly enjoy shopping, but rather I know the number of stores and restaurants in a community help contribute to its quality of life.

When I was publisher of The Alpena News, one of my responsibilities was to find and hire qualified workers for the newspaper.

While that is straight forward enough, up until I retired that meant I needed to find people who didn’t need Starbucks every morning of their life, since the closest store was hours away. It meant that shopping at stores like Target, Old Navy, or restaurants like Olive Garden or Cracker Barrel were also hours away as well.

If you loved woods and water, Alpena was the place to live. If you needed chain stores and restaurants, well … the city probably wasn’t a good fit.

I used to tell applicants I interviewed that “a view of the bay is half the pay” in an attempt to soften the shopping reality.

And while most of the applicants I interviewed understood that reality, more times than I care to admit, often times their family members had trouble coming to grips with the thought of living in a community so “off the beaten track.”

What they saw as a rough stone we knew actually was a diamond.

It really did take a special person with a positive perspective to succeed here. But then, that is what set us apart and made living in the region so special.

All that changed dramatically for Diane and I when we retired to Findlay, Ohio. Suddenly shopping locations were around every corner and restaurant choices were endless.

And they still are.

But I have to tell you I have been more than a little sad and distraught this summer watching the Findlay Mall come tumbling down. It reminds me to some degree of the conversion from retail to other uses at The Alpena Mall years ago.

My sadness with the demolition comes from thinking about what the mall must have been like in its heyday, and wondering if we ever will experience a shopping experience like that in the future.

Trust me, nothing is worse than seeing an empty big box store and the vacant parking lot around it. Toward that end I am pleased Target will eventually move into the demolished area where the mall once stood. I believe area residents will love and enjoy the shopping opportunities Target brings to the community.

But I wonder what happened to the mall popularity that my family and I grew up with. Why did malls suddenly become dinosaurs? Why did an indoor shopping experience at stores like Elder-Beerman, Sears or JCPenney suddenly go out-of-style?

Here in my new home one has to look no further than out at Production Drive and the Amazon Warehouse to discover much of the answer to those questions. Certainly shopping from the comfort of your pajamas at home explains why many shopping patterns changed.

If there is anything that is a constant in the world of shopping though, I believe this is it: The shopping experience is ever fluid, ever changing and often, cyclical in nature.

Thus, like residents must have been thinking in 1962 when the mall complex in Findlay first opened, then again in the 1970s when it was entirely enclosed, someday in the future our grandkids or great-grandkids will probably be shopping at one again.

Robots might be cashiers and artificial intelligence might critique how a piece of clothing looks on us, but I expect one day a newer version of mall shopping will arrive.

The way we shop and dine is ever evolving.

That’s true even Up North.

Heck, it hasn’t been that long ago since Alpena gained its first Starbucks.

Sometimes progress is measured one pumpkin latte at a time.

Bill Speer retired in 2021 as the publisher and editor of The News. He can be reached at bspeer@thealpenanews.com.