Kalamazoo Mall

The bold effort to make a downtown street car-free as a spur to urban vitality and a defense against suburbanization drew national attention to Kalamazoo, which was dubbed "Mall City".

[3] A native of Austria, Gruen had been hired for Fort Worth, Texas, in 1957 to design a comprehensive plan for its city center.

[4] Presented in March 1958 and dubbed Kalamazoo 1980, the plan included a ring road to encircle the downtown area and peripheral parking lots where people would leave their cars and walk through the pedestrian zone.

[1] The mall was opened on August 19, 1959, with a ceremony that included the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra and drew some 50,000 people.

Critics said the mall had too little parking nearby, exposed shoppers to bad weather, attracted crime, and held too few shops.

The street was officially reopened on October 9, 1998; ceremonies included fireworks, a visit from Michigan Governor John Engler, a big band concert like the one in 1959.