Dead Malls of Canada

[ssiguy]

It both breaks my heart and pisses me off when you have dead malls like Chatham Place.

Chatham is a lovely and historic little city with a very nice downtown. It has the mildest climate outside of BC and gets very little snow. For this reason it is becoming a retirement haven.

Unfortunately it, like all of Canada, has a critical shortage of retirement and assisted living accommodation for it's seniors. This is an ideal candidate for such a purpose built building. The city/province could take the entire second floor and turn it into housing for the elderly. The pathways are very large, the stores could easily be converted into housing units, and the larger areas for kitchen, dining, and recreation.

To add to this is that the seniors have access to all the shops, services, and restaurants of downtown to help them enjoy more independence as opposed to some retirement house km from the nearest shopping area. They, due to being downtown, also have the added benefit of having the best transit in the city.

Such renovations add vitality to the downtown, bring workers downtown, give the remaining businesses more customers, and provide a far superior lifestyle to the residents than sticking them in the middle of no where.

Chatham also doesn't have a university or even a campus of one and such spaces would be ideal for this as well.