1955
Easy to Shop… Easy to Park… Robin Center Hits the Mark!
This year, Robin Center, a large addition to shopping facilities, opened. The swamp had been considered “unbuildable” and had reverted to the state as tax forfeited land. Douglas Rees, along with two partners, bought this and a few other lots and hired an excellent engineer, A. C. Godward, who figured out how to build on this. Jerome Begin brought in thousands of yards of fill (some spots in the swamp were forty feet deep) and hundreds of piles were driven for a “friction piling” base for much of Robin Center.
This took several years but the first part of Robin Center opened in 1955 and soon the other two buildings were added, including the Country Club Grocery. On October 12th, 1955 at 8pm the Robbinsdale City Band played a special performance to mark the opening of the new shopping center. KSTP’s Bill Ingram was on hand for the ribbon cutting. Robin Center’s original 18 stores included; Merwin Drug, Sears Roebuck, Sherwin Williams, Brown Photo and F.W. Woolworth.
Mr. Rees died in 1979, and his nephew, Richard Thomson, replaced Alida Roepke as manager. In the 1980’s Many strip centers became outmoded by the regional mall type centers but, in Robin Center, business remained good and most stores were showing steady increases in sales, said Mr. Thomson, who also said that Mr. Rees developed many properties but Robin Center was always his favorite.
In 1982 and 1983, remodeling and “rehabbing” gave the center a bright new look. Another remodel was completed at the turn of the century.
In other news, Robbinsdale Police began to use radar to enforce speed limits as part of Police Chief Matt Spuzem’s “Slow-Down-and-Live” campaign. A sprinkling ordinance went into effect. In an effort to amke water available for cooking and washing dishes, sprinkling was banned between 4 and 8pm.
This post is part of a series loosely based on the book Robbinsdale Then and Now by Helen Blodgett.