Oh yes, Marlers Music, Mineral Area Office Supply, Not Just Comix, and Jose’s Flea Market are still doing business. There are specialty shops, antique stores, a flea market, a magic shop, the Soap Lady and the theater is now the River Worship Center. Downtown parking spots on any Saturday went from full, at all times, to seldom a car in just a few short years.įlash forward to the end of 2021 and Downtown Park Hills is a changed place, with nearly every empty building now containing a business, and Main Street parking spots are used at just about all hours of the day. You can get ice cream from Scoops, drinks from the Slauterhouse or coffee from RaeCole’s, and food from the Factory Diner, Old Mine House, Subway, The Riverside Grill, or Dominos. Not Just Comix, Jose’s Flea Market and a barbershop, and several other stores opened but the downtown never was the same. Flat River was fortunate to still have Marler’s Music Store and Mineral Area Office Supply. The empty buildings did have some new tenets. The small downtown retail stores and grocery stores simply could not compete and began to close. Woolworths, Teds Clothing, Rechters, TG&Y, Goldmans, Foulon’s Drug Store, Western Auto, Harder & Patterson, the Basement Shoe Store, Piggly Wiggly, Federal IGA, our movie theater, and bowling alley closed. As Walmart expanded across America, the first “Super Center” was built in Farmington, in the 1980’s and began selling a complete line of groceries. Mohr Value and Carps were the first of these stores I remember coming to our community. A much more aggressive company out of Arkansas, started by Sam Walton, expanded into Missouri in the mid to late ’70’s and bought these stores out. This concept changed the face of downtowns from coast to coast.

In the early 1970’s, several large retail stores chains were built in cities all across the country. These stores contained a wide variety of merchandise that had only been sold in individual specialty stores, mostly in downtown areas.

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