[esquire]

I'm a longtime Portage Place shopper and I have yet to see any kind of bounce within the mall itself. The stores have gradually moved from the high end to the mid range to the low end over the years, which isn't that bad in and of itself but it speaks to low demand for the retail space. What's worse is that substantial parts of the retail area have been converted to office space in recent years.

I'm not sure that this is a problem that condos or apartments can really fix. Think about it, Portage Place opened at the same time as several huge apartment towers just out back on Place Promenade as well as a large office building (One Canada Centre), and now the province's largest office tower is across the street (Hydro). If all of that hasn't established a critical mass of shoppers for the mall, then I'm not sure what difference another building or two will make.

I'd love to see Portage Place bounce back but it just isn't happening. Unlike the larger cities we don't have a population predisposed to shopping downtown, and unlike some smaller cities (like Regina or Saskatoon), we don't have the luxury of having the main mall in the city being situated downtown which more or less forces people to shop there.