Quote:
Originally Posted by fastcarsfreedom
the mall has not suffered from a tenancy persepective based on style
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There are tenants that pay the rent certainly, but how high a quality are those tenants really? Higher quality tenants = the ability to charge higher rents.
Again, I'm not attempting to offend or upset anyone, I am just expressing my point of view here.
I walked into that mall as a European tourist, never having been to Hamilton before. First impressions count for a lot. It was a physically off putting experience walking through that mall.
If other out of town visitors have the same feeling that I had, then I can't imagine many people thinking, "I must go to Hamilton to shop there!"
As I walked through, the only two stores I came across that I'd even heard of were Tim Hortons (not really a store) and Roots. Nothing in that mall grabbed me or made me think, "Hey, I'd like to come back here". None of the shops were the sort of shop that I, a thirty-something male of a reasonablely good income level, would really want to shop at. To be honest, the shops felt, beneath me. I would want to shop in better places.
My mum, the shopper demographic of the family (middle aged woman with money, who's hobby is shopping, and has grandchildren to dote on) walked in, deemed the place filthy and walked out.
I went to Eastgate twice and Limeridge once and actually spent money there, because there were stores there that I wanted to shop in. I dread to think how much my mum spent in those malls. I personally would much rather go to either of those malls again than the one downtown and I know that my mum, who is currently in Hamilton again visiting my family, has no intention of shopping anywhere other than Eastgate or Limeridge.
The downtown mall's only redeeming feature was the Farmer's Market, which we all agreed would be great for produce if we lived there, however the rest of the Mall would just be a corridor as far as we would be concerned.
I'm not debating how the mall once was or how it's design was once for it's time. I'm just saying that something major needs to happen to that mall, it's time has passed and people with money to spend have higher shopping standards than it can cater for both in terms of surroundings and content.
To encourage people to see downtown Hamilton as a shopping destination and to spend money in downtown Hamilton, there needs to be a draw. Something modern with vision.
An example from the UK:
The Southgate Centre in downtown Bath