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There's something happening at the biggest, emptiest building in Rochester's Northwest Plaza (near Walmart North). First it was an Econo-Foods (opened around 1999 and closed around 2004). In 2007 it became a Gander Mountain, which closed in 2017. There's been some activity in and around the building, so what's going on?

The building permit, in it's review stage, is for a commercial building alteration (valued at $2,245,200) to turn 3470 55th Street NW into an indoor storage facility...

Converting the interior of a previous mercantile use to an indoor climate controlled storage. (Rochester Indoor Storage - North)

If this all goes thru, it'll be nice to see new business in that space again.

It's hard to believe, but back when Econo Foods opened their Northwest Rochester location, we also had HyVee, Rainbow Foods, Mr P's (now Silver Lake Grocery), and Cub. Maybe even Barlow Foods (now Hy-Vee Barlow Plaza...the B-Hyv to my friends and me). Except for Cub Foods, each chain had at least two locations in town.

The first day the NW Rochester Econo Foods opened I needed some eggs and milk. Since I lived less than a mile away, I went there. It was packed like they were giving away $1,000 to every customer. The carts were packed, and lined up back thru the freezer section. I begged someone to let me budge in line, and (phew) a kind soul took pity on me.

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