Posted Jan 19, 2008, 1:24 PM
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End of the line at Centre Mall
Sidewalk sale? Yeah, it might go too, as they clear it all out before stores are demolished
January 19, 2008
Lisa Grace Marr
The Hamilton Spectator
Years ago Angela Cutaia, owner of Daniel's Restaurant, dug through Centre Mall's dusty collection of photos carefully selecting a few to enlarge and hang on the walls to celebrate the mall's history. Hamilton's history.
Now they're for sale.
In fact just about everything in the mall seems to be on sale.
It's the last sidewalk sale in the iconic shopping centre, which was built in 1955.
Centre Mall is about to be transformed with an estimated $100-million redevelopment.
Many of the tenants who are left are selling off inventory in preparations for a move or store closure.
Daniel's is one of the latter.
Cutaia is closing the doors on the restaurant her dad opened 20 years ago. Larry Houle, 52, at Jim's Nut Shack, decided to end the 40-year business. Torcan's luggage shop has the distinction of being the oldest tenant after 53 years. Lou Civil, its owner, is retiring.
Most of the smaller, non-national brand stores will disappear from Centre Mall's roster.
The prices are just too rich.
Branko Radmilovic at Watch Clock and Repair established at Robinson's in 1981) crunched numbers over and over but couldn't make the high lease price, the long-term conditions and the $100,000 investment work.
So he's moving to Ottawa Street.
"A lot of people are moving out to Kenilworth, Barton and Ottawa. They seem to have a community there," he said. "The mall does need an upgrade but as time went on, the enthusiasm went down. A lot of customers don't like the idea (of a big-box centre). I just don't see how it's going to work."
The enclosed mall will be torn down as a series of new stores, banks, restaurants and retail blocks go up along the streets, and toward the back of the site against the railroad tracks complete with sidewalks and parking lots.
Barb Dobson and her elderly friends who live in an apartment nearby say they'll keep coming to the mall.
But they don't like what they're hearing about the changes. Dobson uses a walker and thinks it might be hard to get to the bank in winter.
Scott and Margaret Taylor worry about the seniors and young moms in the neighbourhood. They're newly retired and just moved to the east end five years ago from Burlington.
They don't think the new, fancy outdoor stores with sidewalks will be convenient for those with mobility issues or children in tow. Besides, it won't suit customers used to bargain prices and a homey feel the mall has come to offer.
They've loved Centre Mall and Daniel's, before they even moved to the neighbourhood. "It's difficult to say goodbye to the past but if there's a future with a vision you don't mind -- but I don't see that vision," said Margaret.
However, Houle said even though it means the end of his employment, the mall owners are spending millions. It's their money and something has to change.
"It's been brutal," he says of sales.
While many of the independent tenants aren't staying at the mall site, they are staying in the community.
Shirley Stonebridge is moving Silks and Such florist shop to Barton Street East, as is Bizhan Ahmadi's shoe repair shop and his family's Riders Solutions motorcycle wear store. Ahmadi said he'll be sharing space with another store at the southeast corner of Barton and Ottawa.
"We shouldn't be moving but we can't afford to stay," he says.
Patty Despinic, executive director of the Ottawa Street BIA, said she hasn't been this busy in a decade fielding requests for retail spaces.
"If I had 12, 1,000 square-foot spaces they'd be gone tomorrow," she said. "We knew it would happen, just not to this extremity."
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