Read time: 10 min.

A handful of smaller centers came first, but Muncie didn’t get its first true shopping hub until Northwest Plaza opened in 1956¹. Another, Southway Plaza, opened in 1958². In between, brothers Rolland and Floyd Stephens announced plans for another major shopping center that’s slipped into quiet obscurity: the Meadows³. 

The Meadows took its name from its location, once a literal meadow that was part of Otto Carmichael’s estate. A wealthy newspaperman with a circle of friends that included Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt⁴, Carmichael kept a suite at New York City’s Vanderbilt Hotel. He remained firmly rooted in Muncie, though, and lived in his family’s grand mansion at 908 West Kilgore Avenue until he died in 1942⁵.

Fifteen years later, Carmichael’s meadow was poised for a very different future. Rumors swirled that a Standard grocery and a G.C. Murphy department store⁶ would anchor the fifteen-acre Meadows development⁷, and ground was broken on August 28, 1957. Colonial Supermarket, Hooks Drug Store, and a lineup of offices and shops were initially announced as tenants⁸. It was said that 34,000 potential customers lived within a five-minute drive of the Meadows and an astonishing 71,000 within ten⁹!

Muncie was a very different place back then. Today, the city’s entire population hovers around 65,000. As far as the Meadows was concerned, though, the grocery that opened at the Meadows was Stop & Shop. The 18,000-square-foot outpost featured a hundred self-service areas, seven high-speed checkouts, an express lane, and a courtesy counter with check cashing and other business pursuits. It even featured a customer’s lounge with upholstered seats and ash trays¹⁰.

Hooks, meanwhile, was something of a showpiece. The store was three times larger than any other location the Indianapolis-based chain operated, and it was designed to highlight the very latest in modern retailing. Outfitted with up-to-date equipment and expansive beauty departments¹¹, it signaled the company’s confidence in the Meadows and its optimism about Muncie’s future.

That confidence was well-placed. In 1960, a 12,000-square-foot addition was erected on the south side of the Meadows to make room for a new Scott dime store. Owned by Butler Brothers of Chicago, Scott was part of a portfolio that also featured Ben Franklin and TGY¹². Aside from typical variety-store merchandise, Muncie’s Scott also featured a garden shop and a thirty-foot snack bar. It was the chain’s sixth store to open within recent months¹³. 

Unfortunately, Stop & Shop declared bankruptcy in 1963. The local operation was sold to Pay Less Supermarkets of Anderson¹⁴. When Pay Less opened in 1964, Amber’s Meadows Beauty Salon, Bouquet Flower Shop, Brown’s Barber Shop, Charleen’s Fashion Shop, Coin-O-Mat Laundry, Glidden Drive-In Paint Center, Hooks, Meadows Automatic Car Wash, and Scott all welcomed the new supermarket to their burgeoning strip¹⁵. 

Probably the biggest change to the Meadows came in 1967, when a Zayre department store was added to the plaza as part of a $1 million expansion. The 70,000-square-foot, $750,000 freestanding store featured sixty-eight specialty departments like apparel, sporting goods, appliances, housewares, hardware, health and beauty, books, records, fabrics, and toys, along with an auto service center¹⁶.

Muncie’s Zayre was the company’s 115th store of a chain that expanded from Maine to Florida¹⁷. On opening day, it sold 12” portable TVs for $66.77, Eureka Vacuum cleaners or polisher-scrubbers for $27.88, Rembrandt color TV antennas for $12.85, and Motorola solid-state six-speaker console stereos for $299.77¹⁸. Two years after Zayre came to town, the Meadows was home to Amber’s, Bake-Rite Bakery, Dick’s Watch Center, Glidden Paint, Hooks, KFC, Meadows Automatic Car Wash, Meadows Barbershop, Meadows Coin-O-Mat, Merchants National Bank, Pay Less, Ponderosa Steakhouse, and stalwart Scott¹⁹. 

Unfortunately, the Meadows never seemed to find stable footing and changed hands again and again over the years. The first sale came in 1978, when the plaza was transferred to Reuben Klugman, the brother of actor Jack Klugman of The Odd Couple fame²⁰. Longtime anchor Pay Less left the Meadows around that time, and locally-owned Ross Supermarket took over the space²¹. 

Klugman sold the center to a group of New Jersey investors in 1984, and it seems like that’s when the Meadows started to decline²². After Hooks closed in 1984²³, the Meadows became a ghost town as tenants like Indiana Business College, KFC, Merchants National Bank, Ponderosa, and Reliable Drug Store all left²⁴. 

The real shock came on Christmas Eve 1989, when Zayre abruptly pulled out of the Meadows. The closure was sudden and stunning- especially since it was one of only four Zayre stores nationwide to shut down at the time. No clear explanation was ever offered, and speculation filled the gap: many pointed to the center’s declining condition and rising rents- issues that had already drawn public ire from Mayor Jim Carey just a year earlier. Never one to mince words, Carey quipped that the owners of the Meadows had “more potholes in this parking lot than we have in the whole city- deeper, with bigger fish^26.”

The Meadows’ New Jersey owners filed bankruptcy in 1990, and Reuben Klugman came back to the rescue in partnership with a Texas firm that bought the moribund plaza for $1.3 million²⁷. Unfortunately, the Meadows lingered. It remained home to Ross and People’s Drug, but a McCrory’s discount department store quietly left later that year²⁸. Family Dollar opened in 1990²⁹, but it couldn’t stanch the bleeding. By 1993, the old Zayre had been leased to a local manufacturer of outdoor telephone equipment³⁰.

After Ross closed, the Meadows was hollowed out. Family Dollar hung on, and so did a small in-home medical equipment shop and a Chinese restaurant³¹. Still, that was about it, and that’s the version of the Meadows I remember. I don’t recall ever shopping there as a kid, but Mom used to drop off our recycling nearby, and I’d stare at the tired storefronts from the car window. You could sense the Meadows once mattered, and the echo of what used to be lodged itself in my childhood imagination.

Things changed in the mid-1990s. Muncie tech firm Ontario Systems -now Finvi- moved into the old Zayre store by 1998 with the expectation that the massive space would be enough for operations. Employment shot up, though, and Ontario needed more room! Later that year, the company announced plans to renovate the rest of the Meadows in a $4.5 million transformation³². 

Nicknamed “Silicon Meadows,” Ontario’s new campus was worlds apart from the faded shopping center that inspired its name. The development featured the two main buildings, generous green space, a walking trail, a roundabout, river views, a deck, and even a grill³³. It was a deliberate reimagining of the site with less asphalt, more air, and room to breathe.

These days, it’s been years since the Meadows was revived by Ontario Corporation. Today, portions of the old strip mall are home to Townsend Company, the Goodwill Excel Center, and the Acrisure insurance agency. I could be wrong, but Ontario’s space in the old Zayre store looks like it’s not being utilized.

Still, the center’s revitalization is unique. In the end, the Meadows never really disappeared- it just kept changing skins. What began as a pasture owned by a well-connected newspaperman became a symbol of mid-century optimism, then a cautionary tale of suburban retail’s fragility, and finally an unlikely tech campus. That arc feels especially fitting for Muncie, a place that’s reinvented itself again and again in response to forces far larger than any one strip of land. 

Even though parts of the Meadows feel quiet nowadays, the place still carries echoes of what it was and hints of what it might become next. Maybe that’s why the Meadows has stuck with me all those years we dropped our recycling off there: long after the storefronts faded, the plaza still tells a story of ambition, decline, and reinvention.

Sources Cited
1 In New Northwest Plaza Shopping Center (1956, December 19). The Muncie Star. p. 18. 
2 Southway Plaza Marks Grand Opening (1958, October 29). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 10. 
3 Huge Market Planned Here (1957, June 6). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 1. 
4 Otto Carmichael, Friend of Many Presidents, And Widely Known Newspaperman, Is Dead (1942, April 10). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 1. 
5 LaGuardia, J.D. (1988, July 22). Otto Carmichael home, rich in history, needs imaginative restoration. The Muncie Evening Press. p.  7. 
6 Huge Market Planned Here (1957, June 6). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 1. 
7 Meadows Shopping Center Part of Muncie Expansion (1959, May 3). The Muncie Star. p. 9. 
8 Breaking Ground For The First Building (1957, August 28). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 1. 
9 (See footnote 7). 
10 New Supermarket to Be Opened Thursday (1959, December 16). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 23.
11 (See footnote 6). 
12 Loy, B. (1960, June 14). Three New Stores At Meadows Center. The Muncie Evening Press. p. 13. 
13 (New, 1960). New Store for Meadows Shopping Center. The Muncie Star. p. 4. 
14 Sale of Muncie Store Approved (1963, May 12). The Muncie Star. p. 4. 
15 Meadows Shopping Center WELCOMES the “PAY LESS” SUPERMARKET! (1973, May 23). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 12. 
16 Meadows to Add Department Store (1967, March 11). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 7. 
17 Meadows to Add Department Store (1967, March 11). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 7. 
18 Zayre (1968, March 20). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 8. 
19 All Roads lead to the Meadows (1969,  November 13). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 25. 
20 Mogollon, C.D. (1993, December 12). Coming back? The Muncie Star. p. 1. 
21 Lee, J. & Kinsey, M . (1998, July 29). Ross to close Meadows store. The Muncie Star Press. p. 1. 
22 (See footnote 20). 
23 Francisco, B. (1984, September 18). The Muncie Star. p. 14.
24 Slabaugh, S. (1993, December 12). Developer replacing asphalt with trees. The Muncie Star. p. 4.
25 Buck, T. (1989, October 20). Local Zayre store to close Dec. 25. The Muncie Evening Press. p. 26.
26 Francisco, B. (1989, July 20). Revolt by Merchants Brings New Pavement to Parking Lot. The Muncie Star. p. 20.
27 (See footnote 20).
28 (See footnote 25).
29 Family Dollar (1990, November 4). The Muncie Star. p. 63. 
30 Slabaugh, S. (1993, December 12). Developer replacing asphalt with trees. The Muncie Star. p. 4.
31 Cheesman, M. (1998, November 25). Ontario committed to “Silicon Meadows”. The Muncie Star Press. p. 1. 
32 (See footnote 31). 
33 Good things abound (2000, June 16). The Muncie Star Press. p. 4.