West Branch, MI (may not have existed)

[Hudsons81]

When I lived in a very small town about fifteen minutes from West Branch in the summer of 2001 I often travelled there a lot as they had much of the only services available. I seem to remember this store in a strip mall just outside of downtown (it was either a grocery store, the Kmart or what is now Tractor Supply) that retained what appeared to use the Ames teal green colors. Did Ames ever have a store in West Branch? If not, what would be the closest Ames then?

I would've checked Google Street View but the only image they have of that strip mall is a poor-quality one from the main road from 2009. The closest higher-resolution images are on I-75 and are from 2014.

[TheFugitive]

I was a manager at the Imlay City store in the late 80's/early 90's.
We had no store in West Branch.   There was one in Houghton Lake
(I remember working the Grand Opening there), and one planned for
Oscoda, which never opened.

Had things worked out better for them in the state West Branch would likely
have turned-up on the radar at some point.

[BillyGr]

Since the original post mentions 2001, is there a possibility that Hills was in that area when they were taken over by Ames?

That could explain a store there but not when one was there in the 80's/90's.

[TheFugitive]

I don't think so.  Hills had a couple of stores in Flint and one in Saginaw, but
nothing as far north as West Branch.  And they pulled out of Michigan before Ames did.