When I was driving east on Independence from Kingshighway, I expected to see a big empty spot where the old Plaza Galleria, the ice skating rink, used to be, but the space was even more empty than I thought. This photo is looking south toward the back of the Town Plaza Shopping Center.
Among the missing buildings was a strip of businesses, including Trish’s Place. I was never in the joint, but Missourian photographer Laura Simon showed up on May 31, 2014, to shoot a gallery of photos of the closing of the local watering hole.
Earlier Plaza Galleria posts
This whole situation is just plain SAD! I read back over your post about the :screaming” plants. I think it’s one of your most poetic ones, and it captures how I felt about the ending of the Plaza Galleria.
It’s not that the place was particularly significant to my life. I did take my daughter and her little friends there for skating parties.
It’s the IDEA of it. I loved the big windows, the arches, and the plants. It was such an outlandish, original, imaginative IDEA, and I can’t help wishing that it could have BEEN something more than it was.
–and for that space to hold yet another Walmart!
I am crushed by the overwhelming MUNDANENESS of it all!! No more flights of fancy, as we gaze at the open expanse of glass and arch… A Walmart! Oh, the hideous SAMENESS of it… How can we stand more of the loud, over-commercial banality of yet another Walmart?????
Thank you for recording these changes in our life spaces, no matter how disappointing they are, Ken! I love to look back through your travels from time to time and remember how it used to be!
Well stated comment, Madeline. Another Wally World is not what we need.
Would love to see Trader Joes establish here to provide a alternative. They would get a lot of support.
Schnuck’s has been a good store. They give quite a bit back the community with generous donations. Far,far more the Walmart.
Sometimes, we progress with changes, sometimes regress.
Not a Walmart… A Walmart Neighborhood Market. I believe its mostly a small (NO-Frills, NO Name Brands, BYOSacks & Rent-a-Cart) grocery store. It will be more like Aldi’s & the new Kroger’s Ruler Foods soon to open on William St. in Dushell’s building. Both more competition for Aldi’s, Sav-A-Lot, and Food Giant. In my humble opinion Schnucks & the Walmart Super Center have more of a built in clientele. I wonder if Kroger or Walmart bothered to call ALBERTSON’s and ask how warm the water was in Cape Town? But Albertson’s came in to directly challenge SCHNUCKS and failed – mostly because of the reasons Tom Neumeyer points out above. Albersons tried to BUY-OUT Schnucks and when they refused Alberstons tried to put them out of business by going head-to-head in the smaller markets.
I think one of Albertson’s problems was they were not on the main drag. Wal-Mart as about everything including groceries, but have people fooled as they are not cheap, except for some of their products which are cheap and not very good quality.
Frank,
you must be thinking of the Grocery Store that built the building and opened for a while in what is now the Cape First church at 254 S Silver Springs Rd, Cape Girardeau, MO,
Albertson had a prime location almost right across the street from Schnucks. They built the building on corner of Independence and Kingshighway next to Arby’s. After they went out of business it sat empty for quite a while until Southeast HealthPoint Rehab bought and added on to the building listed as 2126 Independence. Like I noted above, Albertson’s came in to directly challenge SCHNUCKS and failed miserably. Though it was a very nice store and their named brand prices were even higher than Schnucks, but their Albertson brands were affordable. Their bakery, Deli, fresh meat and seafood was excellent – though pricy.