Quote:
Originally Posted by esquire
It didn't have much of a lasting impact. The entire North Portage development seemed pretty tired and dowdy by the time it turned 10 years old.
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I'm from London, Ontario, and we had a similar experience:
A downtown that seemed to be getting shabbier as suburban malls displaced downtown retail.
A new downtown mall opened, filled with high-end luxury stores designed to lure people back downtown. A grand vision of towers built atop it in a second and third phase.
A quick decline from prestige shops to empty storefronts and low-rent retailers (Stitches, Dollarama, etc.) as the new mall fails to attract people back downtown, and all of the remaining downtown street level activity gets sucked into the mall, further killing the pedestrian streetscape. The future phases, naturally, are never built.
What they did now a decade ago was move away from the retail mall: It's now filled with municipal services including a library and performing arts centre, community spaces, offices, medical clinics, and services mostly for office workers and locals (dry cleaners etc).
During its late decline:
Now, reconfigured as office space: