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Article on Park Royal from the Vancouver Sun:

http://www.vancouversun.com/next+best+thing+Park+Royal/2913875/story.html

The next best thing: Park Royal
Mall, show management invite you to a definitely-not-BC-Place replacement

By Claudia Kwan, Vancouver Sun
April 16, 2010

The cancellation of the spring BC Home and Garden Show -- due to the Winter Games and the BC Place overhaul -- does not mean the home 'n' garden curious have no show to visit this year.

Show management and Park Royal management have organized a replacement show, a small show, but a show. It takes place this weekend.

There is no shopping destination in the Lower Mainland more worthy than Park Royal for the replacement show: Park Royal is a historic commercial undertaking, a Canadian first.

Further, there is no better year than this year for management of the West Vancouver shopping centre to sponsor the replacement show: the shopping centre is 60 years old this year.

When the British Properties development company opened Park Royal in 1950, it was responding to a historic residency shift experienced across North America after the Second World War, the rise of the suburb, the bedroom community.

In 1951, the national census reported, more than 44,000 people resided in the three North Shore municipalities, almost double the 1941 comparable.

British Properties spent $1.5 million to build Park Royal Shopping Centre. There were 30 shops, including a Woodward's and a Woolworth's, and 700 parking spots, all on a 11½-acre site.

British Properties named the mall after a London brewery owned by the Guinness family, the then-owner of British Properties.

It was heralded as the first of its kind in Canada, a centre controlled by one owner and designed as one architectural unit. Newspaper and magazine articles at the time marvelled at unique features in Park Royal, particularly in the Woodward's anchor.

The "magic eye" doors particularly impressed Province columnist 'Myra the Homemaker:' "As soon as you come within the electric light beams, the door swings open -- like gremlins -- and out you go with your groceries." Nabob magazine, house organ of the Kelly Douglas food-distribution company, thought the blue enamelled "spee-dee" checkouts with attached cigarette-dispensers, telescoping shopping carts and the soft drink vending machines worthy of praise.

All was not well, of course. Haberdasher George McDonald was told over and over people would never shop at the mall if they could get their shirts downtown.

The store was open three days before it made its first sale -- a tie, he recalled in a 25th-anniversary interview.

Less than six months after opening, merchants heatedly debated extended hours on Monday. Park Royal management was already running ads about Friday shopping until 9 p.m. ( "It provides a service demanded by our modern mode of life.") Management eventually made Monday openings mandatory. Meat sales were exempted. In those days, meat shops were required to close by 5:30 p.m. under a West Vancouver bylaw.

Within six months of the opening, newspapers were already editorializing about traffic on the Lions Gate Bridge. A special constable was appointed to deal with traffic, and a sternly worded alert was published in the Province.

"Our Lions Gate Bridge is approaching the day when it will no longer be adequate to handle the great flood of traffic streaming back and forth between the north and south sides of the harbour. The bridge has been in operation about 13 years and despite additional toll gates, it is evident its rush hour capacity has been about reached." Perhaps because of the traffic congestion and targeted advertising campaigns, Park Royal and its surrounding area flourished.

In 1953 a second floor was added to the Woodward's store and the mall was expanded by an additional 10,000 square feet. By 1961, the Park Royal Woodward's had its own food floor.

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