It’s a familiar story: A mall or some Big Box stores open on the outskirts of town. Several retailers close up shop. And in a few years, “For Lease” signs outnumber downtown businesses and their customers.

About 20 years ago, many Traverse Citians thought their downtown might suffer such a fate. A mall was opening and two large department stores downtown – JCPenney and Woolworth’s – were talking about leaving.

“I think everybody began to worry,” says Bryan Crough, community development director of the Downtown Development Authority (DDA). “So many malls all over the country had destroyed downtowns.”

Yet, unlike most, Traverse City’s downtown has bucked the trend. It’s had several scares in the past two decades, but it has weathered every storm. In fact, downtown merchants say it’s busier than ever.

Of course Traverse City has more to work with than some communities that haven’t fared as well. Not every downtown is a block away from a beach and marina, let alone has a river running through it.

Still, local leaders took nothing for granted, says Chuck Judson, former chairman of the DDA.

“People probably mobilized because of the economic threats,” he says. “I think we looked at that as an opportunity. We took stock of what we have in the downtown and what collaboration and cooperation we needed.”

One of the things that happened as the mall loomed on the horizon – and JCPenney was planning to move to the mall from its large shell on Front Street – was that leaders invited citizens and businesspeople to brainstorm.

“It forced us to take stock of what we needed to do to have the kind of downtown we wanted to have,” Judson says.

The consensus was to tweak ordinances and emphasize three things: Integrating residential development into the downtown; increasing “walk-ability” by consolidating parking and other measures; and encouraging more restaurants and smaller specialty shops.

Local merchants stepped up, as well. Horizon Books moved into Penney’s old spot, allowing the bookstore to expand and itself become an anchor just as library-like bookstores were gaining popularity.

Another scare came several years later, when the two-story landmark Milliken’s Department Store closed its doors. Yet now, inside its old home at Front and Cass, there’s a crowd-drawing coffee shop and two storefronts on the ground floor, and offices above.

A similar fate happened when old Woolworth’s left; the space was also subdivided into several storefronts. Ironically, partitioning the large storefronts was one of the ways the downtown has remained vital; more and smaller stores replaced the older, larger businesses.

It’s all worked well, and crowds downtown have grown, says Wayne and Beth Guntzviller, who own Miner’s North Jewelers. They tell The Ticker that their business gets about 200 visitors per day now – twice what it did back in the 1980s.

Still, Beth said merchants still have to work hard to compete with malls and that newer competitor, the Internet: “We can bring them downtown, but then it’s up to the stores to bring them inside.”

Memory Lane
Want to see a slideshow of downtown TC of days gone by and today? Click on the picture above for a video slideshow!

Special thanks to the History Center of Traverse City for providing the photos that made this video possible. Video by Tom Carr.