Godfathers pizza yum- in building where Peking is now.

deweeze- I remember Warehouse foods- i used to like the BIG flat carts.
I dont remember eagle but do remember Burger Chef and medical center next door.

I miss the funky metal fountain in the mall.

I beleive woodmans was also in the old true value builing at corner milton av and mt zion.
Seems there was one other location besides the old post office and cast aways too.

what happened to the milkman? his wife said get your but home no more playing aroud haha.

I miss woolworths hot dogs on a toasted piece of bread. I can still taste it.

I remember looking out of the sears back stairway overlooking the river.

I think it was bostwicks that had floors that were hilly. so was old keally pharmacy.

There were two stores in the mall too that had hilly floor. guess store I think and a fancy ladies cloths store.white walls.

jd runndels had a parrott.

chicken coop- best chicken.

Was was the name of bakery that was in creston park mall. was it rollinpin?
there was also choc chip cookies downtown in a building to the right of floral expressions which was a chevy dealer. what bakery was that. good cookies!

....YUM! re: To the pizza place across from the old S.S. building! lol! :)

Pizza Villa downtown...???!...Is this the pizza place that was across from the old yellow brick Social Security (now relocated) office?! If not, what was that one called?!..(Though I am "pretty" sure it was Pizza Villa!! If so, YUM! :)

garyprimer....The lady down the street has a milkman !! Next time he comes past I'll get the name for you ! Remember Double D soda from the milkman ??

ihavealife: I can't remember the earlier name of the grocery store that was in that mall by the drugstore! I remember it going out of business, being empty and then Gentz's County Market came in (later to become "NewMarket". We were so happy when Gentz's came in so we'd have a quick grocery trip! I even called my mom and she can't recall the name, though it wasn't the Terrace Street one because the one I was thinking of was actually on North Washington in what is now MercyMall. And gosh I haven't thought about Copps in the longest time! I used to love going there - very well priced RECORDS! Had to have my 45s...AND my organ books from Woolworths :)

What happened to the milkman?

Neighborhood commerce went out when big business came in. I grew up on East Memorial. We had Jacks Mini Market, where the dry cleaners is today, and Simonsons grocery just a few short blocks behind that. Those were the days when you were on a first name basis with the people who ran the businesses. Then we became this rush rush city where the little businesses weren't convienient anymore. After a long day at work, you didn't want to go to the gas station for gas, the market for bread and milk, and the post office for stamps, it's much more convienient to do that all at 1 place.

I don't remember castaways being a woodmans, I remember it being a stop and go. The best pizza was Momma's Pizza, in the shadows of the Trax building, which is now Burger King.

We got all our school supplies and clothes at Copps department store, now Logli, or the other store that used to be in creston park, when it had a center court, and was enclosed.

My Grandmother lived in the big farm house that is now shopko, and as kids we loved to sneak out in the back field and watch the movies on the big drive in screen. Across the road, Farm and Fleet, and nothing else.

Now, they tore down a bunch of houses for parking by the hospital, and to make it even worse, turned a two-lane street into a one lane, which appears to be going thru a parking lot. Everytime I go down that street I have a fear of someone backing out and hitting me. And lets not forget Milwaukee Street, now a one lane with bike lanes on both sides. Did we really have that much bike traffic there to justify that nonsense?

And do we need a McDonalds and a Walgreens every few miles? As kids we played this game everytime we saw them breaking ground for a new business. Is it gonna be a bank, or a restaurant?

Then they started messin with our Parks. I was afraid they were going to change us from the City of Parks, to the City who can't afford to take care of our parks. Close down riverside Kiddie Pool so you don't have to pay a lifeguard, but open up lions beach with no lifeguard? Anybody who may potentially drown at a kiddie pool that is what, a foot deep, had better be with a parent, who better be acting as their life guard.

A lot of what is or isn't in our city today was poor planning, and gross managing. I sometimes wonder what drugs they are on when they come up with some of their ideas. Does anybody remember the fiasco when they redid center avenue out by jumbo's and beyond? Put in that nice new median, and then realized, oops, there is no way to cross over it, and had to redo it.

My last question will be, if Mercy is thinking about building a new hospital somewhere, why the heck are they adding on to the old one? My kids are very upset that they are losing their favorite place to sled in the winter.

ihavealife, I think the store was called the Terrace Street grocery. I believe the other store was called the Jackson Street Grocery, even though it was on Mineral Point Road. I think I read the first Woodman's was in the building on Milton avenue that is now Castaways.
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I lived in the big old brick house on Washington and Mineral Point, kiddie-corner from Janesville Floral, until the hospital got cancer and started it's uncontrolled growth. My greatgrandmother lived on the 400 block of Pearl street and my great aunt and uncle lived on the 600 block of Pine street.

Nina...Don't forget the California burger at the rootbeer stand !!!If you got rootbeer to go in a jug it was glass !!My brother and I were told to get a half gallon,but got a gallon instead..Talk about being heavy !Does anyone remember the name of the grocery store that was next to the little drug store on Washington st.? Was it the fist Woodmans? janesvillecomment.....Do you remember Steve H. that had the pet SKUNK ??? Sounds like you and I grew up in the same neighborhood !!Did you like in the big stone house with the HUGE porch ? Lets not forget the little store on Mineral Point where ALL the candy was kept behind the counter !

Pizza Villa was AWESOME!!! Great memories of having pizza once a week with mom, dad and sis. Now I have a craving I can't satisfy! Someone just mentioned the Triangle; I totally remember that! While I do enjoy the Doghouse, I remember when it was a rootbeer stand and as kids we could just walk a few blocks to get a rootbeer float; then we'd head to the drugstore in the current Mercy Mall area where there was a small cafeteria that had patio tables inside with yellow umbrellas (I loved their grilled cheese sandwiches!) Ah, the memories...

tsk:
Actually, the drive-in was first on the NE corner, in what is now Big Lots parking area. They moved it across the street later on. I was referring to the Walgreens currently at Milton Ave and Blackbridge Road, as an example of stores needing high traffic volume.
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janesvillean:
My family was one of those displaced by the dealt the city made with the Sisters of Mercy to supersize the hospital. Our home was confiscated to provide parking for the foot clinic. I used to buy candy at the Terrace Street grocery and cherry Cokes and comics at the drugstore next to it. My great grandmother would walk to the Triangle Cafe and have lunch there occasionally. The strip mall was built later. My parents bought groceries at SuperValue, which was across Washington Street from where the Dog House is now. I think the building is a carpet store now.
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Ihavealife:
I loved Pizza Villa pizzas. My sister favored their chicken dinners. I heard the guy (Howie something?) who owned Terrace Pizza used to brag about how cheaply he bought his pre-made crusts in bulk. I never tried one of their pizzas.

janesvillecomments said most of what I would have said, although I wouldn't have assessed blame so much. Janesville's downtown is no different from any other cities. The car changed the game for everyone, and of course that not only spurred development, it spurred the growth of Janesville itself through GM. It changed the game for every downtown in America and many cities have struggled as Janesville has to maintain a viable commercial core. Adapting was a challenge -- just as adapting to a high gas price environment will be, a burden that Janesville may not bear as heavily as many other communities.
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The only areas outside the downtown that I would characterize as brick-building commercial districts that are in your mind would be Rockport Rd. at Center Ave. (which goes back to the original plat for the City of Rockport: the square grid there was platted separately but never incorporated, just like Wisconsin City, the district between Lustig Park and Center Ave.), a bit of Racine St. at Main, and some smaller bits such as Washington up by the hospital. (There was an entire neighborhood around the old hospital, which they tore down for parking lots.)
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Janesville had a rectangular city limit that was fairly far out and so there wasn't a situation where the city was annexing development as happened in some other communities. There was a good streetcar system before the buses, and of course the railroad passenger service came right downtown. The bluffs on either side of the river helped restrict development as well. I think Janesville has one core downtown for a lot of good, typical reasons, and it really isn't unusual for a city of this size.
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What you remember from other cities is quite probably village centers that were later incorporated into a major city.
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When we talk about what the market demands, there are limits on what any city can do, but zoning is certainly a tool that many cities have used to better concentrate development. I think Janesville's planning is somewhere between fair and good. The city master plan that is being worked up is more realistic than some plans that were submitted in the past. (There was actually a consultant report in the 1960s that making Main Street a pedestrian mall with a roof over it. Naturally that grandiose idea went nowhere.) It's important that all stakeholders -- and this doesn't just mean the folks with money -- participate in the process so that we get a city that remains viable AND livable.

j66..If they could find Jeff M. that would really make me HAPPY !!! He was a real HOTTIE ! LMAO !!!!

janesville66 ... ME!!! I would be FIRST in LINE ! Best pizza ever. When I was pg with my daughter that is 22 I had cravings for Pizza Villa,I had to settle for pizza hut 4 times a week !LOL

Adam - thanks for asking some thoughtful questions. I've lived in Rock County most of my life and learned alot from the answers that were posted by other readers. I may be in the minority, but I still believe that better economic days for Rock County are coming. So much untapped potential...

Adam, I'm glad you brought this up. On days like today I wish I could just walk to a grocery store and buy my food. Well, I could, but it would be a bit of a hike.

You are almost right Janesvillecomments. Frost Top was were Auto Zone is now. Walgreens left Milton Ave. at least 10 years ago; it used to be next to the Kohls Grocery Store.(Big Lots).

I also grew up here in janesville and still feel it is a great place to live.. So let me ask you this, If Pizza Villa came back to down town Janesville how many of you would come down and get some good pizza?

Penny's was on the corner of Court and Main, where Rock County Appliance is now. I got my first bike there when I was about five.

Thanks, everyone, for the very insightful comments. What you've said pretty much confirms my suspicions that Janesville wasn't big enough to support neighborhood commercial districts until the 1950s or later, when the automobile reigned supreme.

I understand it's not the city or any one entity that determines the retail and commercial landscape. It's all about what the market demands, and when Janesville began to grow enough to necessitate development away from downtown, the market demanded car-friendly areas such as the Milton Avenue corridor, complete with wide lanes and parking lots.

It makes sense then, that the image of these walkable neighborhood business areas that I have in my head is of '20s- and '30s-era brick storefronts. Janesville doesn't have them because, as a city of only 25,000 by 1950 (a statistic that surprised me), it hadn't been necessary to build them.

I think more than anything, having grown up in a larger area with many of those neighborhood districts, I miss their quaint atmosphere (when they're kept up). No matter what the market demands, there's nothing quaint about a strip mall.

Thanks again for the explanations. I think I get it now. :-)

janesvillecomments..I also remember the down town shopping !! I don't remember Penneys ? ,but what about Bostwicks or the all time favorite Jupiter's .The best pizza in town was Pizza Villa when they were on Milwaukee st.Our first fast food was Yankee Doodle .Lambs for jeans ,after we would go to the Little Peoples Shop for albums and incense.lol.Jack could always make you laugh ! Besides a few bars ,I can only think of the Cozy Inn and Sizzlin' Grill being the surviors of down town days ??Even the water fountain didn't make it at the Coin Exchange.

The areas in Madison and Milwaukee you describe have a much higher population density than anywhere in Janesville. That concentration of people makes small businesses viable.

I grew up in Janesville, and as a child and teen, shopped in the Woolworths, Sears and J.C. Penney stores when they were downtown. The downtown area could not expand to handle the increased population and traffic in the late 60's and early 70's. There wasn't enough parking, and semis had an awful time making deliveries to stores downtown due to the cramped horse & buggy era street sizes and layouts. Imagine if shopping at the Janesville Mall was always like being at the Rock County 4-H fair, or if driving on Milton Avenue was always like leaving after the Jaycees fireworks.
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When I was a kid the Milton Avenue McDonalds was at the north END of town - the Frost Top drive-in across the street from it was surrounded by cornfields. We had the Creston Park shopping center on the North side of town, and Sunnyside Shopping center on the west side. They were the closest thing to neighborhood commerce areas. When the Janesville Mall was built, Penneys and others jumped at the chance to have more space and parking. The larger size of the Mall area was so popular that stores didn't mind signing the very expensive, very long-term contracts initially offered by the Mall.
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The Mall spurred the commerical development of Milton Avenue and even Creston Park and Sunnyside struggled to maintain occupancy. Downtown Janesville also had the problem of many aging buildings which were mis-managed by trust funds, rather than owned by the occupants. The managers of those buildings inadequately maintained them for decades, prompting more tenants to leave for Milton Avenue when they could afford to.
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Cities in Wisconsin are too automobile-centric to promote neighborhood commerce. Residential properties are developed far out of walking range of business districts. Janesville has the additional handicap of having been run by people favoring the "big city" image that our smoking diesel buses provide for mass transit over other options which might have benefitted neighborhood stores.
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Now I think the economics of size would prevent the serious development of neighborhood commerce. Stores that have "supersized" like Woodman's grocery, have the space and customer volume to buy more product in bulk, thus reducing their inventory costs. Smaller groceries can't store as large quantities on-site, which means either having off-site warehousing (extra costs for that) or making smaller volume purchases (getting less of a discount from vendors). Franchises like Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, McDonalds, Lube Pro, Walgreens, etc., need the volume of traffic that being in a commercial district brings. They can't get a large enough volume of sales from a walking distance neighborhood to stay in business.
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The answer to what makes Janesville different is:

LOCATION - cramped unexpandable downtown.
LOCATION - spacious commercial Milton Avenue with plenty of parking.
LOCATION - residential areas deliberately segregated and built with twisty little streets.

My ealiest memories of coming into town with Mom or Grandma to shop was going to many of the grocery stores around town.(very early 70's). There was Eagle where Uhaul Rental is now, Warehouse Foods out on 14 (which is still empty to this day), A&P was in the same building as KMart. There was a small neighborhood grocery on Washington St across from what is now Mery Health Mall, not to mention all the grocery stores that where that building. Center Ave had one, Sentry has always been on West Court that I can remember. It wasn't until Woodman's was in the post office building that I ever remember going there to shop. Even Milton at the time had 2 grocery stores. Skelly's in the Junction and Parkview on the East side.

Haven't there been "supermarkets" in Janesville long before the dreaded Walmart started selling groceries a couple of years ago? Maybe the "supermarkets" had a hand in ending the Ma & Pa corner groceries too.

they used to have neighborhood groceries all through Janesville, bit after Wal-Mart came to town,they undercut everyone's prices. Remember, store owners need to make a living also. If no one keeps coming to the "neighborhood" stores, thet arent going to make any money to stay in business.

Thanks for the very intelligent explanations, TCB and raschendel. I've only lived in Janesville nine years, but in other cities I have lived in, zoning rules have also played a big part in determining the location of businesses.
I suspect that Janesville zoning also limited neighborhood businesses and directed development to auto-centric areas like Milton Avenue and West Court. Where is the neighborhood shopping East of I-90 other than the "wedge" at Mke, Mt Zion, and Wright?

I grew up in Janesville and have some professional planning experience, and I think I can try to shed some light on the issue you've presented. First of all, much of the growth in Janesville has occurred since the 1950s, which was, not concidentally, the beginning of the automobile age. In fact, Janesville had only 25,000 people in 1950, and most of the city was actually a walkable distance from the very successful and expansive downtown core, so separate/ancillary business areas weren't really necessary. If you consider other cities in Wisconsin or the midwest in or before the 1950s, when walkable business districts were still being constructed, they were either larger geographically (multiple focii, oddly shaped) or by population, and Janesville was neither then.

Now take that and consider what types of developments have, almost exclusively, taken place since the 1950s, since which Janesville has doubled in size: strip malls, subdivisions, and typical modern sprawl. Janesville has been no exception. The Milton Avenue, West Court Street, and Center Avenue strips have all developed since then, both ciphoning traditional businesses away from the downtown core and certainly preventing "walkable" business districts from sprouting up elsewhere, if they would have even developed at all considering the auto-centric modes of development popular since. And it makes sense, too, since General Motors and its periphery have run the city for almost 90 years, and this industry peaked after 1950, too. Bring it all together, and there you go. Though, now that GM is leaving, maybe we can make a nice walkable neighborhood down there? Even tacky new urbanism would look better than a bunch of abandoned industrial buildings.

Adam:

It is not "cities" who decide where to place a retail "walkable shopping" district. Its entrepreneurs, not governement, that bring together the other factors of production - resources, labor and capital - to provide goods and services satisfying consumer demand at a market-clearing price that includes sufficient profit to justify the enterprise.

Adam, no one is stopping you from developing the retail shopping experience of your dreams in Janesville. You have to be willing to risk your capital-seize your dreams, sell your idea to a bank, see if they are willing to lend you money on this idea. Contact Angel investors, one thing I can tell you is there is not a shortage of people with money-just a shortage of good ideas to invest in.