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Northland Mall in Southfield opened March 22, 1954. It was a unique outdoor mall. In the 1970s, it became enclosed.
It was a playground for shopping for decades. In junior high, some Saturdays I ran around there with friends. My mother often went there with friends like Sonia to shop and have lunch. Back then, Hudson's department store was king.
By the late 1980s, friends who owned or worked at clothing stores saw signs of Detroit's underground economy, particularly on Saturdays.
Some drug gangs came to buy clothes and jewelry. One friend, who ran a clothing store with his father, said some drug gang leaders would bring their crews in and tell everyone to pick out an expensive suit.
When I was at The Detroit News, covering the federal courthouse and writing about indictments of major drug dealers, my friend would occasionally call me and say; "You just wrote about one of our customers." Athletes from Detroit, including the Pistons, and from out of town, also shopped there.
Until the end, there were major departments stores there including Macy's, and local residents relied on the mall for their everyday shopping needs. It closed in 2015.
Since then there's been talk about building a hotel and condos. Now Southfield hopes hoping Amazon puts its second headquarters there. A decision on that comes next year.
In the meantime, on Thursday, demolition began at the 100-plus-acre site, first with the old Target store.
