Dead Malls of Canada

[ssiguy]

The thing that really killed the mall in Canada was the demise of the department store.

Malls always had 2 main anchor tenants.........the big supermarket and the big department store. They were ALWAYS on opposite sides of the the mall and the smaller clothing/junk stores were always in the middle. The smaller stores benefitted by the traffic flow between the 2. The classic big department stores were Simpsons, Sears, Woolco, Eatons, the Bay, and Zellers.

Now all those stores are gone and there is no foot traffic connecting the two and hence all the smaller stores that relied on that connecting pedestrian traffic have closed. This is why so many once malls are now just grocery stores with the other retail space being vacant or used more for office space.