![]() Kitchenette Cafe and Suzie's Dumplings, which faces out over the carpark of the newer Countdown, are still there – but pretty much everything else is long gone. There was the Max's Barber, NAM Nails, Highland Park Jewellers, an organic food store and health store, a pharmacy, the PaperPlus with its Lotto counter, and more. With plenty of parking, it was popular with locals, especially residents of the nearby Highlands Retirement Village. That left Highland Park with two big Countdowns on either end of the same block, separated only by the Highland Park Shopping Centre and its well-known clocktower. The two Countdowns are there, but all the family stores have been totally empty for more than two years. "I think it's very sad to see all the empty shops. That resulted in communities with a mix of Countdown, Woolworths and Foodtown supermarkets – but they were gradually all rebranded as Countdown. In November 2011, the last Foodtown and Woolworths store signs were taken down. The story goes back 20 years to when Dairy Farm International sold its Woolworths NZ Ltd business and it merged with Progressive Enterprises, the operator of Foodtown supermarkets. "I haven't seen that anywhere else in the country, or the world."Īnd why has the stand-off between the two supermarkets succeeded only in driving out the small independent retailers that their community does want and need? The question Bol and Kendall and everyone else asks is, why would their community need two, let alone three supermarkets on one city block? "They're right next to each other," says Kendall. Once a friendly community hub, the desolate retail centre was now somewhere locals avoided. Rough sleepers had moved in, and drug-users. He got a call from a security guard, charged with keeping an eye on the vacated shopping plaza. ![]() His sister Barbara Kendall followed his lead.īruce Kendall is now 57, and a local community leader. You may remember him as the boof-haired young board-sailor who won bronze at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, then topped it with gold in Seoul in 1988. Like almost everyone else, Max's Barber's lease was terminated after 40 years, to make way for a new Pak'nSave. So she was devastated when the longstanding owners of the east Auckland centre sold up to Foodstuffs and, three years ago, they all got letters. And she got to know the 30-plus independent retailers who worked in the open air mall. Plus, find even more The Way It Was articles on in Review The battle of Highland Park: Supermarkets in stand-off despite public promiseīetween two Countdown supermarkets is an open air shopping mall that has been left desolate by the country's warring supermarket chains – and regardless of shiny promises to the Commerce Commission, nothing is changing yetīarber Marja Bol cut a lot of locals' hair over the seven years she worked at Max's Barber in the Highland Park Shopping Centre. This story is part of the April 2023 issue of Hour Detroit. ![]() April is now widely recognized as National Arab American Heritage Month in celebration of the population’s rich and diverse cultural contributions. According to the Arab American Institute, about 3.7 million Americans have Arab American roots, with ancestries tracing back to 22 countries in the Middle East and North Africa. devoted to presenting the Arab American experience. Opened in 2005, the museum is the first and only one in the U.S. Her tape recorder is displayed at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, the city with the largest proportional Arab American population in the country. ![]() Naff, now known as the “mother of Arab American studies” and author of the 1985 book Becoming American: The Early Arab Immigrant Experience, passed away at age 93 in 2013. In 1995, the museum hosted its first full-scale exhibition devoted to Arab Americans, A Community Between Two Worlds: Arab Americans in Greater Detroit. conducting interviews with first-generation Arab Americans and assembling a massive collection of artifacts, documents, oral histories, and photographs that is now housed, in honor of her parents, at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. In 1962, armed with a tape recorder, Alixa Naff traveled the U.S.
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