Can Valade work more magic
on the Hill? Pass the popcorn, too

Men, if you have an Imelda Marcos-type shoe fashionista in the house, lock her up. The word circulating on the Hill is that Gretchen Valade is planning to open a shoe store in what is currently part of the League Shop.

Valade, who has done so much to enliven life on the Hill in Grosse Pointe Farms, with her Dirty Dog Jazz Café and Morning Glory bakery and sandwich restaurant, is not likely thinking Thom McCann.

The Carhartt clothing heiress does things first-class-plus, so it won’t be a place to get cheap cross trainers.

It should make the Hill, which has sprouted a spate of good restaurants in recent years, an even better place to visit. And it might spur other retailers to take a look.

Rumors have also been circulating that several folks have expressed interest in building a movie theater on Grosse Pointe City-owned property that is now a parking lot north of Kercheval on Notre Dame.  The last projects proposed for that area – a small hotel and condominiums – died in the great economic meltdown, so don’t start making popcorn yet. The Gap store closed for good this week.

The Pointes haven’t had a movie theater since the Punch and Judy, a great little venue, closed in the 1980s.

Grosse Pointe News Publisher Bob Liggett tried valiantly to win approval to turn the Shores Theater at the corner of Mack and Nine Mile into a multiplex, but the local merchants fought that project to a standstill.

Pointers do have privileges – in winter only – to use Grosse Pointe Park’s excellent, small movie theater in Windmill Pointe Park. It is a great venue and you discover you know half the audience by their first names. I’m told “War Horse” is currently showing; the cinematography in the movie is great and the story line entertaining. You just have to show your park pass if you don’t live in the Park.

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