What does a possible Sears closure mean for Westmount Mall?
 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/closure-sears-canada-in-london-1.4348844

among other things. I think it is the final nail in the coffin that is the Wastemount Mall

http://www.lfpress.com/2017/07/18/sears-...it-can-begin-liquidation-sales-this-week
http://www.lfpress.com/2017/10/04/sears-canada-could-face-liquidation-as-soon-as-mid-oct

Westmount mall was already mostly empty or converted to office space.

End of Sears is like the end of so many other retailers. Remember Eatons, Woolco, Woolworths? Or departure of Target and K-Mart.

Evolve or Die. The natural order of things.

IMO Sears was very badly positioned between Hudson's Bay Quality/Chic, and Walmart's Banality/Cheap. It did neither very well. Walking into a Sears felt like walking into a beige-tinted version of the Eighties. The stores were extremely tired-looking. And seemingly only had retirees as customers.

The last time I shopped at the Westmount Sears was in 2010. There was probably a grand total of two staff persons in the entire store. Terrible, terrible service experience.

My purchases at that location amount to watch batteries and minor watch repairs. Probably amounts to less than $10 year over the past 4 years.

I still went to Sears Langley on occasion. It's a sad day particularly for the thousands of workers and it was unnecessary if it had been run well but it was run a bunch of incompetents who refused to acknowledge the changing retail environment and develop with it. No doubt the top brass doesn't care...........they will make sure their golden parachutes are well stacked.

Tear the entire mall down and build an integrated residential/commercial like this:

http://www.thegoodwynn.com/images/homePagePic2.jpg

I still think that both the Target and Sears locations are great sites for things like:
-Gym
-Library
-Convention / events halls
-Laser tag
-Wholesale / outlet stores
-Craft brewery? Westmount Ale, Saunders Larger

What these locations have over other vacant retail sites is 2 floors of underground parking. Should make them attractive for some kind of future. The mall management really needs to sell this or the mall may die.

Remember that TD is moving out and Shoeless Joes is out. It's time to repurpose the entire mall. Demo it and rebuild something that includes integrated residential. With housing prices gone up, surely they could make money on that.

if only. I would love to see the Wastemount mall imploded. It really cannot be saved, other than as a ghostlier Galleria (or citiplaza, or whatever that crypt is called downtown).

At least the Galleria is downtown. Westmount is not a great location. I lived across the street during my first year in London (2005-06), and really the only thing around worth going to was the mall....things were hopping in 2005 when we moved in, but man, the place slid downhill ultra-swiftly when the big box barf began to open up south of Southdale. The mall emptied of decent chains, first replaced by fly-by-night mom&pops, then shuttered storefronts. Then they amputated part of the mall. Things continued to slide downhill. Target was the last, best chance, and of course that went South. The place is fucking dead now...can you imagine once the Sears closes for good?

Duplicate post deleted

Well, at least the dialysis centre located on the second floor of the mall will keep the complex at least partially alive, as dialysis patients really don't get a choice as to where they can do their dialysis if they can't do it at home or in hospital.

What I could see happening is that the former Zellers/Target and now soon-to-be former Sears locations will get torn down as it's unlikely that either space will be attractive to future commercial tenants unless they are going to set up a department store or really need all that space. This would cause what's left of Westmount Mall to become a shadow of its former reduced self.

And turning both spots into office space will only work so long as there are tenants who need it and don't care that the space isn't located downtown or close to the 401. There's already plenty of vacant office space throughout London as it is.

A combined retail/residential development sounds nice, but the Westmount neighbourhood as a whole is aging and no longer as attractive as it once was.

It used to be the neighbourhood to live in if you were a young executive working for Bell, Canada Trust or London Life and had a family and needed a good-sized house. Demographics have changed all that and now Westmount is mostly empty-nesters and early retirees.

It seems a lot of the really hot, happening residential development is going on in the downtown core anyway and people are growing less interested in living in the burbs.

When is TD leaving Westmount?

^Feb. 2018

wheres the info that shoeless and td is out?

If you go to Shoeless, you will see it's vacant and has been for a while. TD has it posted inside the branch, essentially it just says they are moving to the other location which is 3 minutes drive (Southdale/Wonderland)

Shows how much I pay attention. I live in Byron, my kids go to Saunders and I drive by there often and didn't notice Shoeless was gone lol. I was talking last year to my old neighbour, who is a manager for Bentall Kennedy, the mall owners. They also own White Oaks, as well as are involved with Penn Equity (which as we know, just announced the big new development with Ikea). Asked him how the search for a new tenant for Target was going and he said "not well at all, if we don't get that filled soon, we might rip it down and put a condo building there".

The Westmount library is moving in to the mall temporarily until the new arena/community centre/YMCA/Library is finished next fall on Southdale. I haven't heard what is going in their location south of Southdale, but I did see a sold sign on it months ago.

Interesting. I didn't know Shoeless Joe's had gone, as I live not too far away from Westmount. It looks like the presence of Cineplex Odeon wasn't enough to keep it alive.

I can see what's left of Westmount Mall disappearing entirely if the dialysis centre decides to move as well. And that could prompt Cineplex Odeon to move further south as well. It would be interesting to see what would happen to the mall property after the mall and the theatre are gone.