Meadville Arby’s closes today for renovations
The Meadville Arby’s located on Park Avenue will be closed during renovation. SHANNON ROAE/Meadville Tribune
From The Meadville Tribune: Meadville Arby’s fans are going to have to wait some time before they can get their next bite of the chain’s signature roast beef. That, or be prepared for a drive to another franchise.
The Meadville location of the fast-food restaurant is closing at the end of business today to undergo renovations and will not reopen until October, according to the sign outside the building.
This Is BC: Vancouver’s historic neon signs being refurbished for new exhibit
From Global News: A Vancouver man is refurbishing the signs that made our city famous. And soon they will be at the Amazon building in downtown on display. Jay Durant has more on This Is BC.
Historic signs once again can light up the night
From The Lane Report: COVINGTON, Ky. — When restaurateur Bill Whitlow opened Rich’s Proper Food and Drink on Madison Avenue in 2018, an old neon sign anchored to the building represented a large but fading remnant of the bygone era when businesses lit up downtown Covington’s nightlife.
Whitlow wanted to recreate that scene, so he did. He piecemealed the work to restore the sign, using businesses and craftspeople on both sides of the river who could address its multiple restoration needs.
The results were … well … both illuminating and tangible.
“Our business probably went up 20 percent the second we put that sign up,” Whitlow said. “It was so recognizable, and we saw an immediate impact the next day.”
The City took notice.
‘Those bastard developments’ – why the inventor of the shopping mall denounced his dream
‘A mechanism to protect white, middle-class homeowners’ … Southdale under construction; the centre features in a new history of malls. Photograph: pr@simon.com
From The Guardian: The world’s first indoor mall was meant to usher in a utopian America. But its creator, an Austrian who had fled the Nazis, came to believe a nightmare had been unleashed that ‘destroyed our cities’
‘Every day will be a perfect shopping day,” cooed the adverts for America’s first indoor mall when it opened in Edina, Minnesota, in 1956. Edina is blanketed by snow and ice in winter, and baked by unbearably humid heat in summer. The Southdale Center offered the bliss of balmy strolls all year round.
Inside its crisp, white, rectangular blocks lay neat parades of shops arranged around a three-storey Garden Court of Perpetual Spring, where 50ft eucalyptus trees rose towards high windows and exotic vines tumbled from balconies overhead. A cylindrical cage filled with brightly coloured birds towered over cafe tables adorned with cheery yellow umbrellas (despite the lack of weather), while a carousel turned to the soothing sounds of muzak. Compared with the familiar low-rise, outdoor strip malls, this climate-controlled, multi-storey shopping landscape was a breakthrough.
Tough times have some Upper Valley diners closing down or looking for a fresh start
Janice Neil of Topsham looks over paperwork at the former Fairlee Diner on Wednesday, June 15. The diner closed in early April. Neil is leasing the diner and hopes to reopen this summer, renaming it Jan’s Fairlee Diner. Photo by Jennifer Hauck/Valley News
From VTDigger: For weeks, Andrew Schain tried to find someone to run the Public House Diner, a classic diner in Quechee that he’s been leasing since 2017. His posts on Facebook were frequent and plaintive.
“Everything you need to open is here,” he wrote on May 4, the last post on the diner’s page.
By the last week of May, with a decision to make about whether to renew the lease, Schain opted out.
Lexington’s iconic Parkette Drive-In closes
From the Richmond Register: After more than seven decades, an iconic Lexington restaurant has served up its final “Poor Boy.”
Employees – and the current lease holders – of The Parkette Drive-In were informed Tuesday evening of the decision to immediately close the historic business.
The restaurant has operated at the same location – 120 E. New Circle Road – since it opened on Nov. 11, 1951; the establishment has also featured its signature neon sign since 1957.
“Time has passed this place by,” Bryan Tipton, son-in-law of the restaurant’s founder, Joe Smiley, said on Tuesday.