^ A little from column a and column c
Even in the 80s downtown Winnipeg and surrounding areas were not particularly prosperous residential areas, but then neither were many neighbourhoods surrounding downtown areas of Canadian cities. The difference is that in other cities, their central residential areas stayed the same or gentrified, whereas ours declined to the point where you now have a large underclass living in or near downtown - so the people most likely to live nearby and use the mall really don't have a lot of money to spend. I doubt that Portage Place's proponents saw that coming.
The changes to the mall in the last decade, with more services and offices, are a natural response to that. It will be interesting to see what Peterson does with PP now that it's nearing 30 years old and will soon be in need of some major renovations.