Department stores were a fixture of small to mid-sized Ohio towns as recently as 30 years ago -- places like Marting’s in Portsmouth; Reed’s in Mansfield, the Carlisle-Allen Company in Painesville -- and Wooster actually had two as recently as 15 years ago. As this story in the Cleveland Leader points out, the stores’s demise is a product of the changing economy. Freedlander’s had increasingly become dependent on out-of-town clientele, and was therefore very vunerable in an era of rising fuel prices.
Unfortunately, however, this was not the only loss announced that day. The buildings that house Freedlander’s are the target of demolition and new construction, the end result being a new, giant “Merchants Block.” According to a press release issued by Freedlander’s and placed on the Main Street Wooster website (click here), the decision to demolish was based on one local contractor’s assessment that the several period buildings that housed the department store were “patched together” and therefore needed to be removed. The Main Street Wooster site also features a rendering of the proposed project.
Its too bad that more thought could not be given to preservation in this instance. Washington Properties, the developer, has a good track record in renovation projects, many of which are in Downtown Wooster. A very similar project in Kalamazoo, Michigan some years ago resulted in a better win-win for character and history. There developers also faced a series of buildings that had been combined over the years to create the venerable Gilmore’s Department Store, but included preservation in the way that they treated their rebuilding project.
Its not a proposed project without some gain; reinvestment in any small Ohio downtown is notable and all too rare. Plans for the new building show a structure which does show sensitivity to the massing and scale of surrounding buildings. For a city with a rather mixed past with historic preservation, however, its an opportunity to create a strong win that also shows a sensitivity to local history.
Photo: Downtown Wooster - Seth Gaines/Creative Commons License