Lakeside Mall closed two years ago. When will it finally be demolished so that work can begin on the shiny new pedestrian-friendly Lakeside City Center?
“We are getting right toward the finish line here,” Sterling Heights Mayor Michael C. Taylor said at a recent City Council meeting. “I’m still optimistic that we can see some demolition work happening here in 2026, but maybe that’s overly optimistic.”
He explained some of the remaining red tape.
“At the last meeting we voted on the Brownfield plan, which is now going to go to the State of Michigan to vote, I believe June 23,” he said. “Once that is approved by the State of Michigan, things can really start taking off.”
The mayor said that the vote City Council took on May 19 — to establish a “corridor improvement authority” for an area next to the mall — was “hopefully one of the last procedural votes that the city will have to take” related to the redevelopment.
“This is really starting to come together, and I want the public to know that,” he said. “We are very, very close to making major progress on Lakeside Mall.”
A “controversial” former city councilor, Paul Smith, stepped up to the mic to lambast the city for investing in what he called a “hopelessly disastrous idea.”
“Lakeside is a black hole money pit that will absorb all the money you dump into it,” he said. “We got this Miami Vice outfit that nobody really knows who they are, but one of these years they’re gonna borrow some money and get going on it. These abandoned malls, they’re all over the country. … Nobody’s getting any place with this stuff.”
Here the mall stood on Friday, 711 days after its closure.
JC Penney is the only store still open.
Last time I was here, employees told me this store was going to survive the demolition, and I kind of only half-believed them. But at the City Council meeting, they showed a birds-eye view of the overall site plan, and it indeed showed JC Penney standing strong.
I’m honestly pretty excited for work to get going on this. I live well within walking range, and, if it’s actually good, it would be a massive upgrade in what’s accessible to me by foot.
“I think people will want to visit this area more so than they did when Lakeside [Mall] was booming in the ’80s and you couldn’t find a parking space at Christmastime,” City Councilor Maria G. Schmidt said. “But patience is a virtue in this whole project, because we’ve been working on it for a decade now.”
I’m not sure we’ll actually be living in this area long enough to take advantage of the completed project, but I’m keeping an eye on it anyway.
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