By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
Not sure what Buffalonians will have more fun remembering: Hills or gas prices at $1.13.
Buffalo News archives
The shopping plaza known as the Clarence Mall, complete with empty Ames, G&G Fitness and Burlington Coat Factory stores, was bulldozed in 2005 when the name was changed to the Shops at Main/Transit.
Barnes & Noble, Old Country Buffet and Bed, Bath, & Beyond now fill the retail strip between the Eastern Hills Mall and Main Street along Transit.
Bells Markets and Liberty Shoes were among the stores at the Clarence Mall in 1981.
When the Clarence Mall held its grand opening in 1967, ads called the place “the shopping plaza of superlatives.”
Grant City, the fourteenth store in the W.T. Grant chain, was by far the largest at 135,000 square feet when it opened. The 30,000-square-foot Park Edge grocery store that opened at the plaza was the largest in Western New York, with “the area’s largest dairy case,” measuring 80 feet long with four levels.
