[CoryB]

I really feel that Garden City's decline was heavily driven by the opening of the Chief Peguis Trail bridge. Before that time Garden City was well isolated from north-east Winnipeg and Polo Park had yet to come into its retail boom. People tended to go to the enclosed mall closest to their house and not really drive across the city to another mall. The opening of Chief Peguis Bridge changed that to some extent. Suddenly the Garden City area found itself almost perfectly in the middle of Polo Park and Kildonan Place. KP and Polo Park themselves were relatively separated into the "east" and "west" sides of Winnipeg. This was witnessed with the opening of the first two Costcos but others would follow.

Even then Polo Park was still pretty quiet with only Safeway for groceries, the same with KP. More stores followed opening "east" and "west" locations and increasing forced traditional Garden City area shoppers to go to other areas. Eventually more of the big stores followed into the east and west model to the point when you need something from Rona conveniently Superstore and Walmart were both nearby. Those shops also conveniently located close the the mall in case you needed to go there as well.

Before its sharp decline started, available space in Garden City was an issue too with retailers who might have gone there needing to locate in a different mall or skip the area all together. Eventually customer traffic declined at Garden City and the larger stores started leaving that mall which caused its decline in importance to accelerate.

Through all this St Vital was a bit of a special case. The limited land for commercial development in the area held the "south" node back some in its development. Ultimately the rise of the south-west lead to the spilt focus we currently have between St Vital and Kennaston. The distance from KP and the traffic issues between the area and Polo Park though worked to isolate it in ways Garden City never benefited from.

So next time you want to remember Garden City Shopping Center fondly curse the Chief Peguis Bridge for bring an end to it importance.