I wish OLP had LED's installed on it. A strip or something going down certain lines... would really make downtown pop
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Some great shots of One London Place, thanks for sharing.
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Masonville Place has lost two of its 3 anchor stores: Sears and Target. Only The Bay remains.
-Also the big box development at Fanshawe and Hyde Park is competing with it (Similar to Westmount Mall / Wonderland Power Centre). ...But I think the mall should do ok. It's proximity to Western and it being a future node for rapid transit should help keep it going. |
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Example: Some big-box outfits, such as Costco and Walmart will likely be around a for long time, as their retail facilities are simply the end node in a complex vertically integrated cradle-to-grave business process. However the mid-sized outfits that are little more than simple retail facilities to dump massive amounts of cheap product such as American Apparel or Old Navy's days are numbered. American Apparel, which is famous for it's slutwear for teens and tweens has already filed for bankruptcy in spite of the fact that it was a very hot item not that many years ago. Old Navy moves disposable, low quality, mass produced clothing. Such products are now being pushed hard by internet retailers. I saw one web site the other day advertising wedding dresses for $20 (!) If such an internet retail model is successful, it will drive retailers such as exemplified above (and there are many more) out of business or force them to be internet retailers themselves. Such retailers typically account for leasing at least half of the retail space in a big-box complex. Another emerging phenomenon is the concept of the internet sales storefront for items that are too large or complex to be purchased online and shipped directly to home. I know that a lot of positive noise is being made about IKEA coming to London, K-W, St.Catherine's, etc. The idea is that for some reason if your city has an IKEA store, you've made it to the big leagues. The problem is that these aren't IKEA stores (at least not the traditional types). They are modern versions of the cash and carry pickup outlet, with the added angle of ordering most of their product online ahead of time. I'll proposition that if this model is successful, there will never be a full-sized IKEA store is any of these communities. What's more, other conventional retailers will follow suit - reducing their big-box facility to a glorified pickup window, with just-in-time shipping reducing the requirement for warehouse stocking to a minimum. In short, those who do stick around and use this retail model will be wanting a fraction of the space that they would use under the current retail model. In summary, the big players such as Walmart will likley remain for the foreseeable future. However, although it will take time and won't happen overnight, a lot of the current big-box tenants will not be around in 10 or 20 years because for those retailers, the business model will have vanished. Since the business model will be gone, what replaces those tenants will likely be low-end retailers who come and go with regularity (that can already be seen in dollar stores and the seasonal "Halloween stores"). Those more solid retailers who remain will require much less space if they follow the internet sales storefront retail model. The end result: vast stretches of underutilized or unused warehouse-type buildings surrounded by acres and acres of underutilized or unused parking lot. Urban decay. So, what would eventually fill in the spaces that one day will be occupied by these empty or underutilized big-box complexes? Well, these buildings are meant to be disposable and easily disassembled, so the physical buildings may eventually disappear. There is economic motivation for this: for example the Chinese are always looking for us to sell them our scrap steel at good prices (ironically for uses such as building things like aircraft carriers that will eventually be used to project power against us). Perhaps residential infill might eventually re-purpose the space - as is currently being proposed for the old McCormick's lands. Much like those old brownfield lands however, there may be a long interregnum of years or even many decades between when these sites are abandoned and redeveloped. If one uses the McCormick's and surrounding lands as an example, the Kalvenater factory that was in that same area closed operations 50 years ago. In closing, the real threat is that much these current big-box lands may well become the abandoned brownfields of the future. At least the soil won't be contaminated. |
Here's a view from my friends apartment. 25th floor.
Taken with an iPhone 6 then edited with the clarity filter with camera+ http://https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVP9cA3UwAAKq4R.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVP9cA3UwAAKq4R.jpg |
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Markets the size of London are far less likely to support the high end retail that's been appearing in Toronto malls in recent years. The closest thing London has is Masonville, and I think that mall will do fine in the long term (especially under Cadillac Fairview ownership), but malls like White Oaks that are not in wealthy areas will be more likely to struggle. They're lucky to have Hudson's Bay and H&M. |
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Bye white oaks.. Seriously. They might as well explains that Walmart. |
Walmart is going to move to Wonderland and Exeter. H&M is indeed opening at Masonville, and I have also heard that Zara is returning.
http://www.lfpress.com/2015/09/10/sh...on-renovations |
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here is a link on the Walfart plan: http://www.smartcentres.com/sites/de...ondon_SW_0.pdf
It goes back some years, however. also: http://www.lfpress.com/2014/07/10/gi...space-it-wants in the comments section, somebody jokingly referred to Walmart as Mallwart. :haha: |
I have said this for years and I still stand by it....................malls come and go and even if they all close down there will be one that will be around for the next 100 years..........Westown Plaza Mall.
It is not a destination mall which is why it is successful. It survives well due to being right in the heart of thousands of apts and they aren't going anywhere. |
BTW...........did they tear down Westmount?
I remember Westmount in the 70s and early 80s was THE mall in London and it was always busy. |
Westown has been Cherryhill village mall for at least 15 years. And they just announced that the LCBO in the mall is closing.
Old people central. As for Wastemount mall, it is still there, albeit greatly truncated. The supermarket and adjoining part (a strange micro mall consisting of two stores: urban planet and Superking market) have been marooned from the rest of the mall; of which the second storey is all offices/services; with retail concentrated on the first floor. Still many vacant storefronts. Food court and adjoining movie theatre were demolished, replaced by a freestanding VIP Cineplex situated at the rear of the mall. here is the mall layout today: http://www.westmountshoppingcentre.com/map Argyle "mall" is completely repurposed as a big box format. Oxbury mall apparently is heading to a similar fate (better than what is there now which is basically nothing, aside from a discount supermarket). |
London skyline from the Free Press
http://storage.lfpress.com/v1/dynami...=1365649381299 Via http://www.lfpress.com/2015/12/11/lo...form=hootsuite |
London skyline
https://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1624/2...f205d43d_h.jpg Larger sizes here https://www.flickr.com/photos/magicf...18556/sizes/o/ |
The image clearly illustrates the problem of the fabric of downtown London: very sprawly. If everything was clumped closer together, you would really get a big city feel when downtown. as it is now, there are 2, perhaps three separate clumps of highrises, with lowrise gaps in between. Let's hope that some of the new announced projects will come to fruition to densify the downtown.
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