Dead Malls of Canada

[TorontoDrew]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

I like Gibsons. I had breakfast at Molly's Reach a few times. The last time being 2003. I ordered "The Relic".

LOL, The Relic.

source: https://i.ytimg.com


Apparently, Molly's Reach is back on T.V as a filming location for Murder in a Small Town. I've never seen the show.

[MolsonExport]

Relic put ketchup on everything. Everything. Even ice cream.

[MolsonExport]

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[MolsonExport]

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[MolsonExport]

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[halyszka]

Eau Claire's corpse (RIP to its food court nostalgia) sets the template for adaptive reuse. What's the vacancy like at Deerfoot Meadows or Market Mall lately? Boomtowns like Calgary flip malls faster than flops.




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[EnvisionSaintJohn]

I’ve been trying to compile enough Portage Place photos to post… but my God do I miss that place, especially the liminal skywalk anime shops, and of course… the fountain. ⛲️

My grandparents took me there as young as 3 years old to the BK where Thomas gave them my requested mustard on a soda lid for my fries. What a strange little toddler I was.

I’ve since realized McDonald’s sweet and sour is the ultimate French fry condiment! 🍟

[BlackDog204]

Originally Posted by BlaineN

It may have already been mentioned, but there's a dead mall in Calgary that's actually been dead since the day it opened. The Horizon Mall located just north of the airport.

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What were they thinking???

It's north of Calgary
Crossiron Mills had just been built a few years earlier in the exact same spot.
When I lived in Calgary from 2015-19, the Horizon Mall was probably at 10% vacancy.

[london91]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

yes, Cherryhill mall (and the one nearer to my home, Sherwood Forest Mall) is an example of a micromall that has thrived. It doesn't have much competition for the type of stores it hosts (within a few kilometers, which is a lot for the seniors and students that lack automobiles), it is on a very busy street close to the university, and most of all, it has tens of thousands of people living right behind in what is London's largest apartment complexes...set to almost double in size in the next 5-8 years, with expansion to the West along Oxford, up until Proudfoot lane.

Masonville, the biggest, most upscale London-area mall is still doing well, having attracted an Apple Store along with other upper-market offerings. White Oaks hangs on, but while mostly fully leased, lacks the that upscale mixture. It hasn't fallen yet, but you can see that its glory days are well behind it, with the profusion of cheaper retailing options like Dolllarama, Bentley's, cellphone bling shops, and nail salons. Westmount mall, once perhaps the largest of London's malls, is in dire shape. It is virtually bereft of retail, other than the stores fronting Wonderland Road. A third of the mall was demolished, orphaning the former grocery store and adjacent passage. What remains of the upstairs has been entirely converted to offices. It still gets those mall walkers, though. But what a sad decline from 2005, when I moved to London (renting an apt right across the street, when the mall was nearly completely leased...within one year, perhaps a third of the shops were vacated, on account of the Big Box Barf Dumbcentre built at Southdale and Wonderland. Galleria downtown (aka Citi Plaza) is, save for a Timmies and a Dollarama, utterly bereft of shops. Once upon a time, it hosted a Harry Rosen outlet and Polo Ralph Lauren. Now it is nearly completely empty, of both shops and services. Argyle mall was knocked down and replaced with Big Box Barf. As was Oakridge Mall. Likewise for Superstore Mall south of the 401. And likewise for the world famous Oxbury mall. London Mall has been redeveloped (half of it became a T&T), and lost its inner mall.

Masonville is a great mall - I am hoping we see new retailers again!

White Oaks used to be the fancy mall (not anymore) remember Coach, Club Monaco and the first Sephora/H&M...

I don't recall a harry Rosen outlet or Ralph Lauren (but both seem like a better fit at Masonville then south end).

I think we used to have a real hary Rosen at Galleria mall with Lacoste etc way back.

[hipster duck]

Re: The shops at Aura in Toronto

It's not a "Chinese mall", per se, but the layout of the mall and the sizes of the shops are something that I've only seen in malls catering to the Chinese community, and all of these malls are eventual failures.

These malls all feature a floorplan that's essentially a grid of undistinguishable corridors arranged in a grid, with small shops lining them. There's no focal point to the mall. There's often a food court, but it's off to one corner, not in the centre.

Pacific Mall is built like this. The new addition to the Aberdeen Centre (not the original one with the atrium) in Richmond BC is also like this. Those are just the two off the top of my head, I'm sure there are others. They're all kind of failures, with high store turnover and vacancies. There's no reason to visit these places, since there's no destination store or any attraction to draw people there.

I'm not sure why they build malls like these. Is it a way to attract fronts for money laundering?

[Djeffery]

White Oaks in London has an interesting floor plan based on expansions over the years. The first store on the site was in what was up until last year the Bay, then Woolco was built across the parking lot (Walmart now) and the space in between created the mall. Then they expanded west to what is now The Gap, which was Marks and Spencers. Through the 80s, they put little extensions on either side of that wing until they ended up with the strange floor plan they have now. Will be interesting to see what they come up with that Bay space, which is 2 floors.

It's funny, I knew the mall manager 20 years ago when Walmart was talking about building a new stand alone store nearby and he couldn't wait for them to leave. Maybe a bit snobby, but he said Walmart brought down malls, and he knew he was competing with a higher end Masonville across town. He was not worried at all about filling that space back then and he said it would make that mall a real showplace. Then the owners sold and the new owners didn't want to deal with 20% of their floor space being vacant so they made a deal to keep Walmart there. That old manager was right though, even with an 8 figure floor to ceiling renovation in the last 10 years, that mall is a cheap looking dump now.

[Marshsparrow]

In the 80s/90s London had such great malls!

Galleria
Masonville
Westmount
WhiteOaks

And Towers south of 401 - I think there was another large format store out there as well.

[GreatTallNorth2]

In the 80's/90's London had more malls than it's population could sustain. The two major malls in London are White Oaks and Masonville. Masonville will always be the upscale mall and I think White Oaks will be fine as the new local owners have approved plans for major residential density on the site, plus more residential planned across the road and the benefit of having a stop on the BRT line.

Think about a city like Buffalo, which is around 1.1 million residents in the metro, about 2x London's size. They have the Walden Galleria which is the only major mall that I know of in the city. I was there about a year ago and it is clearly struggling as there were many stores closed. So in comparison I think London's malls are in better shape.

[MonctonRad]

Malls in Canada as a general rule are in much better shape than they are in the US.

There is only one mall to speak of in Maine (the Maine Mall in Portland). I think it is doing OK, but, the Bangor Mall in Bangor is a dumpster fire. It is almost entirely empty.

Meanwhile in the Maritimes, just about every regional city with a CMA/CA population approaching, or over 100,000 has at least one regional mall in decent shape. It is only the secondary malls in these regional cities, and the smaller malls in smaller communities that are struggling.

The decimation of the shopping all is much more advanced in the USA.

[ssiguy]

White Oaks will continue to do OK because it is at the extreme south of the city while Masonville is at the extreme north. Due to London having no freeways and horrific traffic, going from one to the other is nearly impossible. They both have huge catchment areas but don't compete with each other.

White Oaks will never do really well again but it also has the advantage of being right off the 401 & 402 as well as being only 15km north of St.Thomas so it gets a lot of traffic from nearby outer suburbs and rural areas.

[Djeffery]

Originally Posted by Marshsparrow

In the 80s/90s London had such great malls!

Galleria
Masonville
Westmount
WhiteOaks

And Towers south of 401 - I think there was another large format store out there as well.

Back in the olden days lol, there was a Metropolitan department store across the road in the Superstore Mall (which was then known as Treasure Island). Superstore came along in the 70's, which was a Loblaws brand where I first started seeing the plain yellow No Name products. It then became a Zehrs before closing in the 90's and the store being broken up into smaller stores and bars. And of course the arena where the London Knights played at the opposite end of the mall until just shy of 25 years ago.

[Ozabald]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

Malls in Canada as a general rule are in much better shape than they are in the US.

There is only one mall to speak of in Maine (the Maine Mall in Portland). I think it is doing OK, but, the Bangor Mall in Bangor is a dumpster fire. It is almost entirely empty.

Meanwhile in the Maritimes, just about every regional city with a CMA/CA population approaching, or over 100,000 has at least one regional mall in decent shape. It is only the secondary malls in these regional cities, and the smaller malls in smaller communities that are struggling.

The decimation of the shopping all is much more advanced in the USA.

I remember Bangor Mall in its heyday. The place was jumping and the parking lot full of NB plated vehicles.

The large regional malls in the US are doing fine. It's the malls in smaller tier cities like Bangor that are struggling/dead. Saying that, the department store in the US is in much better shape than Canada. All that's left in Canada is Wal-Mart; with Simons in select markets. Compare to the US, despite the downsizing, there is still a national presence of department stores such as Kohl's, Macy's, Target, Wal-Mart, JC Penney, Nordstrom; along with strong regional stores such as Dillards, Von Maur, Fred Meyer, etc.

[Mister F]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Re: The shops at Aura in Toronto

It's not a "Chinese mall", per se, but the layout of the mall and the sizes of the shops are something that I've only seen in malls catering to the Chinese community, and all of these malls are eventual failures.

These malls all feature a floorplan that's essentially a grid of undistinguishable corridors arranged in a grid, with small shops lining them. There's no focal point to the mall. There's often a food court, but it's off to one corner, not in the centre.

Pacific Mall is built like this. The new addition to the Aberdeen Centre (not the original one with the atrium) in Richmond BC is also like this. Those are just the two off the top of my head, I'm sure there are others. They're all kind of failures, with high store turnover and vacancies. There's no reason to visit these places, since there's no destination store or any attraction to draw people there.

I'm not sure why they build malls like these. Is it a way to attract fronts for money laundering?

There are some exceptions to this, like Emerald Park in North York. It's a bit like Aura in that it's a Chinese style mall at the bottom of residential towers and connected to the subway. But the mall part is quite small and at street level. No need to descend into a basement. And there's enough foot traffic between the food court at one end and Food Basics and the subway at the other to keep the businesses in between relatively viable.

[Loco101]

I've mentioned this before but something that really helps malls is having lots of Asian immigrants or students as part of the local population. Here in Timmins our Timmins Square shopping centre would be doing much worse without all of the immigrants and students from India. (mostly from Punjab) I've noticed the same thing in so many other Canadian cities where people who came from various Asian countries tend to be quite over-representing within malls.

[Loco101]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

Malls in Canada as a general rule are in much better shape than they are in the US.

There is only one mall to speak of in Maine (the Maine Mall in Portland). I think it is doing OK, but, the Bangor Mall in Bangor is a dumpster fire. It is almost entirely empty.

Meanwhile in the Maritimes, just about every regional city with a CMA/CA population approaching, or over 100,000 has at least one regional mall in decent shape. It is only the secondary malls in these regional cities, and the smaller malls in smaller communities that are struggling.

The decimation of the shopping all is much more advanced in the USA.

From all my recent travels and shopping I totally agree that malls are doing better overall in Canada. I just mentioned how Asian immigrants are helping to keep our malls alive and we have a much larger percentage of our population of them compared to the states. It's not the only reason but it's something from my personal observations between both countries.

A recent cross-border example I noticed was between Sarnia ON and Port Huron, Michigan. Sarnia's main mall is doing very well and has few empty spaces. Port Huron which is about twice as large as Sarnia has a main mall that is almost dead. There is a Target and a Five Below store that anchor and there are only a small number of stores open with probably 70-80% of the spaces being empty. You can tell that it was once a successful mall. Very few Canadians shop there anymore but even the local population stopped going.

Every mall I've been to in the US this decade has had very noticeable signs of decline with empty spaces, store closing sales and little traffic. In Canada it really depends on the demographics and local population growth-decline but malls overall are not declining nearly as quickly as in the USA.