"I cringe a little bit when people still say 'The Gateway Mall,' because it's just The Gateway," says Edie Trott, marketing director for Vestar, an Arizona-based property company that acquired The Gateway in early 2016. In fact, the entire scene ticks most of the clichéd shopping-mall check boxes, but that doesn't waver the new owner's branding, or its attempt to disassociate The Gateway from a traditional mall. Mall staples like Zumiez, Hot Topic and Fanzz are steadfast Gateway tenants. On a recent weekday morning, a shopper skirts the upper floor balcony gripping an Abercrombie & Fitch bag while a young couple sits awkwardly close to one another on the steps leading down to the ground level, and another woman, pushing a toddler in a stroller, B lines to a food vendor. Storefronts continue to beckon customers-albeit fewer today than a decade ago.
The sleepy road down its spine remains open. Sometime later, bulldozers and trucks were sighted in the fenced-in area.The beige buildings are still standing. In 2008, it was found that the company that owned the property, Mosaic Co., a phosphate and potash producer, had fenced in the smokestack and surrounding structures with barbed wire. The deed to the town was turned over to the state of Florida for a partial payment of a judgment made against American Cyanamid for environmental damages. In 1976, a mine was built in Fort Lonesome and the few functioning structures in Brewster were moved there. The town was officially closed in 1962 and though much of the town was demolished afterward, the drying plants, shops, main office, and chemical plant remained. Many bought their houses at low prices and moved to the nearest towns of Ft.
In the 1960s, the company planned to close the mining town and offered the workers a choice the townspeople can buy their houses and move or the house would be demolished. As segregation was an issue at the time, whites lived in a section of town located south of the mine while blacks lived in a section to the east.
The town was built and expecting all the workers to live there, the needs of the town’s people were met, including schools, a movie theater, medical clinic, post office and swimming pool. Operated by American Cyanamid, the mine was located hours away from the nearest town.
The town of Brewster was founded in 1910 to accommodate the workers at the time who spent the day working at the nearby phosphate mine. Photo Credit: Florida Photographic Collection, 1920s – The Brewster power plant
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