Southgate Shopping Center
Southgate Shopping Center sign (Eureka Road entrance) in August 2006
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| Location | Southgate, Michigan |
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| Coordinates | 42°11′52″N 83°11′27″W / 42.1977°N 83.1908°WCoordinates: 42°11′52″N 83°11′27″W / 42.1977°N 83.1908°W |
| Address | Eureka and Trenton Roads |
| Opening date | September 1957 |
| Architect | Charles N. Agree |
| No. of stores and services | 30+ at peak |
| No. of anchor tenants | 3 |
| No. of floors | 1 |
Southgate Shopping Center is a shopping center located at the southeast corner of Eureka and Trenton Roads in Southgate, Michigan. Completed by 1958, it was one of the first major strip malls in the southern Detroit suburbs until the nearby Southland Center opened in 1970. At its peak, the center housed over thirty stores.
As early as 1952, the Realty Mortgage and Investment Corporation of Detroit announced that a multimillion-dollar Southgate Center would be built at Eureka and Trenton Roads, and that "space has already been let to many Michigan chain stores, including Kinsel Drugs, Federal's, Wrigley Stores, S. S. Kresge and others," with construction scheduled to begin in the fall of 1952. Southgate's sister center, Eastgate Center (located at 10½ Mile and Gratiot in Roseville) was announced at the same time, with both to have Federal and Kresge as anchors.
Five years later, Southgate Shopping Center was erected in what was then the lone remaining section of Ecorse Township. The 40-acre (160,000 m2) center was designed by architect Charles N. Agree in an L-shape: where one row of stores, near the Eureka entrance, faces Trenton Road and the other row, near the Trenton Road entrance, faces Eureka. There were large signs bearing the name "Southgate" at both entrances (the current neon sign off of Eureka Road was erected in the late 1970s). The mall's trademark was a 135 ft (41 m). water tower, located next to the future Federal's store, close to Trenton Road.
Coincidentally, the remainder of Ecorse Township was annexed in 1958 and became the city of Southgate; the name so chosen "because of the shopping center then under consideration," according to Ecorse Township Supervisor Thomas Anderson.
Wrigley's supermarket was the first tenant, opening for business in September, 1957. Federal's department store opened the following month in a separate 80,000 sq ft (7,400 m2) building next to the center. The official grand-opening for the center was held October 16, 1957, featuring a ribbon-cutting ceremony with Supervisor (and later Southgate's first mayor) Anderson, music by a German polka band, and radio remotes from the parking lot (including Robin Seymour of WKMH, later host of the Swingin' Time program on CKLW-TV and eventually WXON-TV).
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