Today's intersection: huge retailer targets Brookings then fire destroys downtown businesses

When this blogger was growing up in the 1960s and 70s Brookings, South Dakota was the closest bigger town where my mom and dad drove to shop—Spies Super Valu, Coast to Coast Hardware, Wong's, Pizza King, JC Penney, maybe even Brost's and if we were lucky enough we'd go to the State University campus to get a shake. Downtown was home to the College Theater where our Junior class went to see Romeo and Juliet. Main Street was a favorite drag in high school and often a loud happening place when this student was at SDSU. 

The Brookings S & L Department Store with its trippy overhead trolley system that flew invoices to cashiers from the sales floor and delighted youngsters had roots in Elkton and ultimately influenced the founders of Target but the location in Sioux Falls was gutted by a 1948 fire. 

Now, Brookings owns a research park, the hospital, the liquor store, the water, the phone company, the power company, an entertainment venue, the golf course and home to South Dakota's largest public university and a federally subsidized cheese and dairy industry but parts of town are poisoned with forever chemicals from a rebranded medical products manufacturer.

And today there is much jubilance about Target moving onto the outskirts of Brookings but also significant sadness about the fire that took the 145 year-old Brost Building, so far, plus several businesses and apartments downtown. So this humble blog can't be the only murmur mourning the mortality of Main Street, Murika but here we are. 

Minneapolis-based Target Corporation currently has nearly 2,000 stores across the United States. About 30 are near college campuses, according to the company’s website. Target stores nationwide range in size, with the typical store averaging about 125,000 square feet. The Brookings Target store is expected to be 127,000 square feet. [City trumpets Target as Brookings Marketplace anchor tenant]

Dad actually hated the town despite being born in the Brookings Hospital and spending most of his life in the county but that's not really what this post is about. It's more about the outpouring of local support after the blaze but fires in downtown Brookings aren't a new phenomenon and because of the ages of most of those buildings on Main they're all at risk to a runaway conflagration. The park just south of Nick's Hamburgers is there because of a fire and dollar stores have lured lower income shoppers away from downtowns cutting up the retail pie even where Walmart and Target don't exist. 

Deadwood rebuilt itself after a catastrophic fire in the historic district and Hot Springs is recovering, too.

In the meantime, Grunewaldt Properties LLC owner Kevin Grunewaldt said structural engineers are coming up from Sioux Falls to assess the conditions of the walls of the buildings that are adjacent to the now-collapsed one that housed Brost’s, including the one he owns at 314 Main Ave. The affected businesses in his building are Johnson & Richter Creative, The Nook Bookstore, Emerald Grace Clothing Co., Prairie Soul Studio, Greenleaf Accounting and Hand Tied Floral. Nearby businesses also dealing with the fire’s impact include Seven Songbirds Boutique — with half of its back ceiling collapsing during firefighting efforts — and The Exchange, which sustained water damage, he said. [Blaze destroys Brost's Fashions, displaces residents in downtown Brookings]

Mr. Grunewaldt spoke in opposition to a mask mandate during a city council meeting in 2020 so a cynical observer might suspect he's a Republican Earth hater sweating lawsuits while haranguing his insurance company to expedite his claim settlement so he can get tenants out of those nasty old buildings downtown and into something a little pricier maybe near the new Target out by I-29!

Image lifted from the Downtown Brookings Faceberg page.