[mburb1981]

Located diagonally across from Detroit Metropolitan Airport's property at Middlebelt and Eureka Roads:


Built in 1960 and measuring 4,600 square feet (if Southeast Michigan Council of Governments [SEMCOG] data is accurate), this is a small but reasonably sized building. At the time this building went up, DTW had yet to expand south to Eureka Road and the area was still part of unincorporated Romulus Township (which merged with the village of Romulus to become the incorporated City of Romulus in 1970).

My guess is that this was built for a local chain (i.e. Wrigley's or Food Fair) or maybe an independent. I know National used similar pylons, though their roofs were barreled, and this building has a flat roof, though this may have not always been the case. Any ideas you have?

[Groceteria]

To be honest, I’m pretty certain that it was never a chain supermarket, based on the siting and the size when I looked at it in Google Maps. If anything, it may have been a small local grocery store or even a drugstore. It was clearly built in the 1950s, and any major supermarket would have been much larger than this by that time.

Definitely an interesting building. I’ll see if I come up with anything when I’m doing my research in Detroit next week.

[Groceteria]

Actually, it would not surprise me to discover that It had always been a hardware store.

[Andrew T.]

I'm thinking "convenience store" or "liquor store," but that's nothing more than a hunch.

One oddity of the site is that the parking lot is concrete, like the lot of a gas station. It also extends to the side, where it looks like it's been half-obliterated by excavation. An adjacent building stood just north of this until the early 2000s.

[BillyGr]

Although it's always hard to rule out something unusual having happened in this particular area.

The reasoning being due to a small town in this area, in which Grand Union built a new store in the 1990's (about 1994) that was under 25,000 Sq. Ft. in size (was even less in the original plan, then they added a pharmacy that still only brought it close to 25,000).

Of course, when they were proposing/building this, this particular town had 2 grocery options:

- A store run by the northeastern Price Chopper chain housed in an old Main Street A&P storefront (the kind with about 3 aisles total, so you can guess how small that is - it is now entirely occupied by a brewery/restaurant).
- A Finast store (the only one I know of locally) in a building that currently holds a Rite Aid and would be considered small compared to their newly built drugstores (so probably under 10,000 Square Feet).

Thus, if you have a town with that into the 1990's (actually the GU became a Price Chopper after the GU bankruptcy and was only replaced two or so years ago), it doesn't seem quite as strange to have had a grocery store built this size in 1960 (even potentially by a chain)...