Following the Yellow Brick Road: CherryVale Mall and the Glory Days of Shopping in Rockford

Following the Yellow Brick Road: CherryVale Mall and the Glory Days of Shopping in Rockford

By Thomas L. Vaultonburg

There was a time when going to CherryVale Mall was an event in itself. You didn't necessarily need anything. You didn't need a shopping list, a particular store in mind, or even money to spend. You went because something might be happening there, because you might run into someone you knew, or because there was always the possibility of discovering something you hadn't known existed. For generations of people growing up in Rockford, Cherry Valley, Byron, Belvidere, and the surrounding communities, CherryVale was more than a shopping center. It was one of the places where the larger world came to us.

There are already enough stories about the decline of American shopping malls. Empty storefronts, abandoned food courts, and photographs of escalators carrying nobody anywhere have practically become their own genre of internet entertainment. That's not the story I want to tell. I want to remember CherryVale when it was an exciting place to go, when the stores were full of merchandise that couldn't be purchased by pressing a button on a telephone, and when an afternoon spent wandering around a shopping mall could become a treasured childhood memory. I want to remember the strange little details that made CherryVale unlike anywhere else, including the fact that for a while, you could actually follow a yellow brick road through the mall to a working radio station.

Building a New Shopping World

Construction of the Mall at CherryVale began in January 1972 on a large tract of land southeast of Rockford, near Harrison Avenue and Perryville Road. Developed by the Richard E. Jacobs Group of Cleveland, the project represented an enormous investment in the future of regional retail. The developers understood that Rockford occupied a strategic position between Chicago, Madison, and the smaller communities of northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. With access to U.S. Route 20 and the Northwest Tollway, CherryVale was designed to attract shoppers from well beyond Rockford's city limits.

The original mall was an ambitious undertaking, occupying approximately 714,000 square feet of retail space. Sears opened on September 26, 1973, followed by Marshall Field's on October 1. The first group of specialty stores opened that autumn, and on November 1, CherryVale celebrated its official dedication. Miss Illinois 1973, Colleen Metternich, released 1,000 balloons, while marching bands from East High School and Harlem High School performed for the assembled crowd. Congressman John B. Anderson attended the festivities. The opening wasn't treated simply as the arrival of another collection of stores. It was a civic event, something worth celebrating as a milestone in the region's development.

The mall continued expanding almost immediately. H.C. Prange opened its two-level department store in August 1974, accompanied by the Prange Way discount operation. CherryVale offered the enormous Sears and Marshall Field's stores alongside smaller retailers such as Kroch's & Brentano's Booksellers, Disc Records, Chess King, Casual Corner, and Lane Bryant. There were places to buy clothes, records, books, candy, jewelry, and nearly anything else a shopper might want. More importantly, there were things you might never have thought to want until you saw them displayed in a store window.

For people coming from smaller communities like Byron, where I grew up, CherryVale represented a different scale of experience. You could spend hours exploring the building. It was climate-controlled, brightly illuminated, and filled with people who seemed to be going somewhere even when they weren't. There was a certain pleasure in being part of that movement, drifting from one store to another, looking at things, listening to the conversations around you, and occasionally discovering something that made the entire trip worthwhile.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road to WYBR

One of CherryVale's most distinctive attractions wasn't a store at all. It was a radio station. In 1976, WYBR began broadcasting from studios inside the mall, in lower-level suite E-114. The station's call letters stood for "We're the Yellow Brick Road," and the mall took that idea literally. A yellow brick road was incorporated into the shopping center's floor, guiding visitors toward the station's studios, which were located near a series of rainbow arches.

Imagine that for a moment. You're walking through a shopping mall in Rockford, Illinois, and there's a yellow brick road on the floor leading to a radio station where actual broadcasters are producing programs that people throughout the region are listening to in their cars and homes. It seems almost impossibly whimsical now, the sort of thing a developer might suggest during a brainstorming session before somebody from accounting explained why it couldn't be done. But CherryVale actually did it.

The station had an equally unusual history. Originally operating as WKWL, it had broadcast from a building on North Bell School Road before a fire destroyed its facilities. After a change in ownership, the station was rebuilt at CherryVale and returned to the air as WYBR. A 300-foot transmission tower stood in the mall's parking lot, while the studios operated inside the shopping center itself. The original programming concept was called "Theatre of the Mind," with theatrical personalities contributing to an imaginative approach to radio. Early plans even included an Oz-inspired helicopter traffic report called "Ork Reports."

Among the personalities associated with WYBR was Jonathon "Johnny B." Brandmeier, who hosted the morning show from 1978 to 1980 before going on to become one of Chicago radio's best-known personalities. Actress Susan Saint James was also reportedly a frequent visitor and contributor to the station's programming. For a relatively brief period, CherryVale wasn't simply a place where people consumed popular culture. It was a place where popular culture was being produced.

The yellow brick road eventually disappeared, and WYBR moved on from its mall studios. But the memory survived. Ask longtime Rockford residents about the early days of CherryVale and there's a good chance somebody will remember that unusual stretch of yellow flooring. It's the sort of detail that gets left out of conventional histories because it doesn't seem particularly important. Yet those are often the details people remember most vividly.

Helicopter Santa, Movie Theaters, and the Giant Clock

CherryVale's early years were full of the sort of promotional imagination that characterized the great age of American shopping malls. During the 1970s, Santa Claus sometimes arrived by helicopter, landing in the parking lot before making his way inside to greet children. It was a spectacular way to announce the Christmas shopping season, and it must have seemed especially magical to children who had never seen a helicopter up close, much less watched Santa Claus emerge from one.

There were other memorable features. Longtime shoppers recall the giant clock near the escalators, the arcade, and the central gathering areas where children played while adults shopped or rested. These architectural and decorative details helped make the mall recognizable as a particular place rather than simply a collection of interchangeable stores. People remembered where things were. They had favorite entrances, favorite places to meet, and familiar routes through the building.

Movie theaters added another dimension to the experience. The freestanding CherryVale 1-2-3 theater opened near the northeast parking area in August 1975, giving shoppers the opportunity to combine a trip to the mall with an afternoon or evening at the movies. In February 1983, a four-screen theater opened inside the mall itself. For people growing up in the region, these theaters became part of the geography of moviegoing, places associated with first dates, family outings, and the excitement of seeing a new film on opening weekend.

CherryVale also attracted political figures. On March 11, 1976, President Gerald Ford visited the mall during his reelection campaign, speaking before a crowd reported to number more than 3,000 people. It was a reminder that shopping malls had become important public gathering places, capable of attracting crowds that once might have assembled in a downtown square or civic auditorium. The mall had become one of the region's principal stages.

By the 1980s, CherryVale was firmly established as a center of regional life. Families shopped there, teenagers congregated there, and people from surrounding towns made special trips to visit stores they couldn't find closer to home. The mall was constantly changing, with new retailers appearing as fashions, technologies, and tastes evolved. Yet the basic attraction remained the same. CherryVale was a place where you could encounter something new.

Babbage's and the Worlds I Brought Home

Of all the stores that occupied CherryVale during its glory days, the one that meant the most to me was Babbage's. For those unfamiliar with the name, Babbage's was a chain of retail stores specializing in computer software and games. The company was named after Charles Babbage, the nineteenth-century mathematician whose mechanical computing designs helped establish the foundations of modern computer science. Eventually the chain would become part of the business that evolved into GameStop, but during the 1980s, Babbage's occupied a special place in the rapidly developing world of home computing.

This was a period when personal computers were still relatively new, and computer games were something of a specialized interest. You couldn't simply download a game from the internet, watch somebody play it on YouTube, or consult thousands of online reviews before making a purchase. You went to a store like Babbage's, examined the boxes on the shelves, read the descriptions on the back, and tried to imagine what the game might actually be like. The artwork was often far more sophisticated than the graphics the computer could produce, but that was part of the appeal. The boxes invited you to imagine worlds that the technology could only partially represent.

For me, the greatest treasures at Babbage's were the SSI Gold Box Dungeons & Dragons games. Strategic Simulations, Inc. released Pool of Radiance in 1988, followed by Curse of the Azure Bonds in 1989 and Secret of the Silver Blades in 1990. These games translated the rules and atmosphere of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons into elaborate computer role-playing adventures. You created a party of characters, selected their classes and abilities, explored dangerous environments, fought monsters, collected treasure, and gradually uncovered stories that could take weeks or months to complete.

I bought those games at Babbage's, and they became some of my favorite computer games of all time. What I remember most vividly is the sense of possibility they offered. A box purchased at the mall contained an entire world waiting to be explored. There were maps to study, manuals to read, spells to memorize, and mysteries to solve. The games demanded patience and concentration. You could spend an entire evening fighting your way through a dungeon, only to discover that you'd made some terrible tactical mistake and needed to begin again.

There was something particularly satisfying about the Gold Box games because they trusted the player's imagination. Their graphics were primitive even by the standards of later computer games, but the limitations didn't matter much. A few pixels could represent an ancient ruined city, a subterranean temple, or a dragon guarding its treasure. The player's mind supplied everything the computer couldn't show. In that sense, the games weren't so different from the tabletop Dungeons & Dragons adventures that inspired them.

What surprises me now is how well those games have endured. I still occasionally play through Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, and Secret of the Silver Blades, nearly four decades after their original release. The interfaces are awkward, the graphics are antiquated, and some of the mechanics would undoubtedly frustrate modern players. But the essential pleasure remains. I still enjoy assembling a party, setting out into unfamiliar territory, and discovering what waits around the next corner.

When I remember CherryVale, I remember Babbage's more clearly than almost anything else. I remember the anticipation of finding a new computer game, the pleasure of examining its packaging, and the knowledge that I would soon be taking it home to begin another adventure. I can't claim that Babbage's was the most important store in CherryVale's history, but it was certainly the most important one to me.

When the Mall Was a Place to Discover Things

One of the things that distinguished the shopping malls of the 1970s and 1980s from today's retail environment was the element of accidental discovery. We now live in a world where algorithms attempt to predict what we want before we've even decided we want it. Online retailers recommend products based on our previous purchases, search histories, and the behavior of people whose interests resemble our own. The system is remarkably efficient, but it doesn't always leave much room for surprise.

CherryVale operated according to a different principle. You walked around and looked at things. You might enter a bookstore because a cover caught your eye, wander into a record store because you heard something interesting playing, or stop at a computer store because the artwork on a game box suggested an adventure worth having. You didn't need to know what you were looking for. Sometimes the most interesting things were the ones you hadn't known existed.

The mall also served as a meeting place for people from communities that might otherwise have had relatively little contact with one another. Rockford teenagers crossed paths with kids from Byron, Belvidere, Cherry Valley, and other nearby towns. Families from across northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin came to shop, eat, see movies, and participate in the busy social life of the shopping center. CherryVale was one of the places where the region encountered itself.

It was also a place that seemed comfortable with a certain amount of silliness. A yellow brick road leading to a radio station. Santa Claus arriving by helicopter. A thousand balloons released during an opening celebration. These weren't necessities of retail commerce. They were attempts to make a shopping mall entertaining, memorable, and perhaps a little magical. And judging by how many people still remember them, they worked.

The CherryVale Worth Remembering

CherryVale underwent renovations and changes over the years, as any successful shopping center must. Stores opened and closed, department store names changed, and the building adapted to new generations of shoppers. But I don't think the history of CherryVale should be reduced to a discussion of which stores eventually disappeared or which retail trends replaced them. That approach overlooks what the mall actually meant to the people who spent time there.

For those of us who grew up in northern Illinois during the 1970s and 1980s, CherryVale was part of the landscape of our lives. It was where we bought clothes for school, discovered music, went to movies, met friends, and sometimes encountered things that would remain important to us long after the stores that sold them were gone.

I think about the yellow brick road sometimes. It's such a wonderfully strange detail, the idea that somebody decided a shopping mall in Rockford, Illinois, ought to have its own little piece of Oz. And then they actually built it. Somewhere at the end of that road, disc jockeys were broadcasting music and conversation to listeners across the region. Elsewhere in the building, shoppers were browsing books and records, children were watching the escalators, and teenagers were looking for something interesting to do.

And somewhere in those years, I walked into Babbage's and bought a computer game that I would still be playing decades later.

I didn't know I was purchasing a lifelong memory. I thought I was buying a game.

That's the CherryVale Mall I want to remember. Not a monument to a vanished form of retail, but a place where ordinary afternoons sometimes turned into something extraordinary. A place where you could follow a yellow brick road, encounter the larger world, and occasionally bring a small piece of it home with you.