Dead Malls of Canada

[SpongeG]

but the best part of the city is in vancouver - you waste money on transit and whatever that could be spent on seawall sipping lattes

[vid]

I don't like Lattes.

My cousin lives on Boundary Drive, if I went to Vancouver I'd probably stay with him. That's close enough. I could leave in the morning, spend all day downtown and go back in the evening to sleep, and in the process save enough money to drink hundreds of lattes on the seawall while I stay for twice as long as I could afford with a hotel.

[SpongeG]

well there ya go time to leave the t-bay and head west

[Jets4Life]

Not sure about most dead mall in Canada, but Portage Place get my vote for scariest mall. The majority of "visitors" are Aboriginal gang members, homeless people, and welfare cases.

City Place is dead, but it has potential to be converted into more office space, which I heard they were doing.

Grant Park was ok until Zellers replaced Wal-Mart a decade ago, and they got rid of the food court. Now it mainly has seniors.

Not sure about Garden City. It did not seem too dead to me the couple of times I have been there in the last 5 years.

Northgate Mall is dead. They should just tear it down, and build condos.

Polo Park is the busiest Mall in Winnipeg.

[vid]

Originally Posted by Jets4Life

Not sure about most dead mall in Canada, but Portage Place get my vote for scariest mall. The majority of "visitors" are Aboriginal gang members, homeless people, and welfare cases.

That is what people say about Victoriaville in downtown Thunder Bay. In reality, those "aboriginal gang members" are just normal native people and white people only call them "gang members" and fear them because they're idiots. There are no "homeless people" because ADT throws them out and there is a homeless shelter nearby anyway, and the welfare cases are there because the employment resource centre is located in the mall.

Like Portage Place, it's mostly an office plaza with a food court and some antiques stores.

[MolsonExport]

The London Mall in London (indoor portion) is down to a Sears scratch & dent, a pakistani import store selling sarongs, and perplexingly, a southern-style pork BBQ lunchroom. A shittier mall, I never saw, except that Honeydale thing in Etobicoke....Oxbury mall also in London is almost as shitty.

Rumour has it the mall is slated for demolition.

[Marty_Mcfly]

Originally Posted by PoscStudent

The Village mall in St. John's is dying a slow death. It was on life support for a while but some new stores have moved in recently and the Sport Check that has been in there for probably a decade has moved into the old Sears location, expanding their store by atleast 50%. There are still a good few vacant stores and I doubt that many of the stores that are in there will be able to survive.

The mall is suffering because of the big box stores and because of the larger and more popular Avalon Mall. The Wal Mart in the Village moved to a bix box store development several years ago which wasn't good for the mall but the Wal Mart and the supermarket that were in the Avalon Mall also moved out and this ended up being worse for the Village. With the Avalon Mall having two large spaces open up both Sears and Winners, which also had locations in the Village, moved in and it wasn't long before they closed their stores in the Village.

Sears and Winners were the two big attractions for the Village and with them gone the vast majority of the stores that were left there were all in the Avalon Mall. The mall was sold a few years ago, it may have been sold twice in recent years, and the new owners brought in some different sotres but it hasn't made much of a difference.

I know your post is old, but I feel like I should weigh in on this. The village mall doesn't have much life left in it. With Hart closing its Atlantic Canada stores, the mall is going to be out one of its three major anchors. I know there's plenty of empty space in that mall, and all the stores there have duplicates in the Avalon Mall. The village mall is well decorated, but the transient population that frequents that place completely deters me from going there. I saw a guy get stabbed at the bus stop outside that place one evening a few years ago, and I've never really gone back since.

There are other smaller malls around town that come to mind too. Torbay Road Plaza doesn't have much happening besides the ICT Group call center, and Woolgate Plaza on Kenmount only has a few tenants. Same with Mount Pearl Square. Everything in St. John's is overshadowed by the Avalon mall, which currently has no vacancy and is under expansion

[MolsonExport]

An (old) article about the world famous Honeydale mall in the National Post:

A Saga Of Two Plazas Golden Griddle at Honeydale Mall offers an image of what it might look like if a neutron bomb carried off the human population of Etobicoke while leaving everything else intact.

Read article here: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/...?id=3bf8f683-190f-4961-8eaf-863cb5213891

Videos of Honeydale mall (done by children):

Outdoor:
• Video Link

Indoor:

• Video Link

[ForestryW]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Indoor:

• Video Link

Creepy. Especially when the kid walks up to his reflection in the windows about 2/3 of the way through.

Might I suggest an SSP Halloween Special: one creepy dead mall per day.

[Acajack]

I know in some cases it is simply because of bad management on the part of a mall's owners, but I still find that the empty or near-empty huge commercial spaces in otherwise very prosperous urban areas really speak to how our society is very much a "disposable" one...

[armorand93]

Originally Posted by van Hemessen

Creepy. Especially when the kid walks up to his reflection in the windows about 2/3 of the way through.

Might I suggest an SSP Halloween Special: one creepy dead mall per day.

PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace PortagePlace

[halifaxboyns]

I'm not sure if anyone from the Halifax thread has posted it; but Bayer's Road is a pretty dead mall. When I was growing up, it, West End Mall and Halifax Shopping Centre were the three big Halifax malls. West End Mall was the first to die off after sears moved out and then Bayers Road started dying when Zellers moved.

West End mall is nothing more than a renovated big box mess. Bayer's Road at least tried to turn into something else buy building a couple suburban office towers on the site and converting the retail units into offices.

[That_Chris]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Wow, Oxbury sounds even worse than the London mall: something I didn't think was possible.

Just got back from Oxbury (Butter on sale at Food Basics). It may not be pretty, but it ain't dead. The mall was actually packed. Full parking lot, people all over the place. And while the far end is mostly emptied out (except when it's the head elections office for the riding), there's plenty of stores.

I'd say this is just a lesser mall, not a dead one by any means.

[MolsonExport]

^I actually heard (for the first time ever) oxbury mall mentioned on the radio...something was going on there today to lure people.

[vid]

The mall in the neighbourhood where I grew up could probably be declared dead now. Its website was recently blanked. The grocery store closed on Tuesday. Its only anchor is now the Zellers, which will close in 8 months to become a Walmart. There is a Shoppers Drug Mart inside that will close in about two weeks when a larger location opens a kilometre away.

Aside from Zellers and Shoppers, the only other tenants in what was once a 45 tenant mall are a public library (which is considering a new location in the area), a government services office/UPS store/lottery shop (its all one store, kind of odd), a BMO, a laundromat, a barber shop, a Robin's Donuts, and some health care offices that are only in the mall until their new facility is built downtown. The roof leaks all over. Also on that site is an abandoned Home Hardware (closed because it was falling apart), a small building that now houses just a TD Bank (used to have a Robin's and a dental office in it), and a gas station. A neighbouring hotel development which has about a dozen stores in it is doing just fine.

The Zellers is one of two Zellers locations in the city that will become a Walmart soon. It seems pretty obvious that the whole site will be razed and a new Walmart will be built there. Walmart will own the land directly below the existing Zellers, and it is no secret that one of the owners of the mall itself desperately wants to sell. (The other owner wants to restore the mall to what it once was; the second largest in the city.)

Considering this mall is beside one of our busiest intersections, at the point where all Trans-Canada traffic crosses (it used to bill itself as the "last chance for anything for 600km"), in the city's fastest growing neighbourhood, the fact that it is seeing a nearly 90% vacancy rate and facing demolition speaks of how bad its management is.

The other Zellers-to-Walmart conversion in a mall near the Airport will be a simple renovation/re-branding of the store. That mall was pretty shitty a few years ago, but its owner (the half-owner of the dead mall that wants to restore the mall) put in a lot of investment and now it is 100% occupied, like that owner's other two properties. Three of our four smaller once-dead malls have been brought back from the dead.

[ssiguy]

In the 70s and 80s London has so many malls it really was ridiculous.
When I was back in London last year I was suprised to see Oakridge closed.....one of London's first malls.
I was also very surprised at Westmount. In the late 70s it was "the" mall in London.
I know they are redoing Westmount but I think it's good money after bad. From here on in there will only be 2 main London malls......Masonville and White Oaks which are at complete opposite ends of town.
I think Arglye will keep truckin along as it is the only mall in East London. I also think Cherryhill will always be there as it serves an extremely high density area of seniors and students.
I saw the new Galleria {or whatever the hell they call it now} and it was nice but it will never amount to much. They have, however, done well at filling it up with Western & Fanshawe campuses, the central library, and the theatres. Due to that forward thinking of trying to change the character of the space, it will never be the write-off it once was. I think they have done a very good job of transforming over to a business/civil/entertainment complex.

[shreddog]

Originally Posted by vid

...The Zellers is one of two Zellers locations in the city that will become a Walmart soon...

This blew my mind when I heard this ... does T Bay really need 3 Walmarts???

Originally Posted by vid

... Three of our four smaller once-dead malls have been brought back from the dead.

Hmmm, not that I disagree, but this is how I would categorize it

Malls recently dead and back alive ...
T Bay Mall

Malls never dead
Intercity
Granview (<< strange as it seems)

Malls dead and gone (or soon to be)
County Fair (the one in Vid's post)
Keskus (torn down)

Dead and still dead
Northwood
Victoriaville

What would be your 2 back to life other than T Bay mall?

[armorand93]

Court of St. James (Winnipeg) - Sals House, Sobeys and a bunch of little medical clinics and other such things. TOTALLY DEAD!!!

[Doug]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

In the 70s and 80s London has so many malls it really was ridiculous.
When I was back in London last year I was suprised to see Oakridge closed.....one of London's first malls.
I was also very surprised at Westmount. In the late 70s it was "the" mall in London.
I know they are redoing Westmount but I think it's good money after bad. From here on in there will only be 2 main London malls......Masonville and White Oaks which are at complete opposite ends of town.
I think Arglye will keep truckin along as it is the only mall in East London. I also think Cherryhill will always be there as it serves an extremely high density area of seniors and students.
I saw the new Galleria {or whatever the hell they call it now} and it was nice but it will never amount to much. They have, however, done well at filling it up with Western & Fanshawe campuses, the central library, and the theatres. Due to that forward thinking of trying to change the character of the space, it will never be the write-off it once was. I think they have done a very good job of transforming over to a business/civil/entertainment complex.

I lived in London during the mall boom. In the 2 years I was there, the Galleria opened as did expansions of Masonville, Westmount and White Oaks. They all seemed to do quite well at the time. London seemed to have an overabundance of smaller, 60s era malls: Cherry Hills, Oxbury, SuperStore south of 401, the one at Wonderland and Oxford and the one way west on Oxford with the Loblaws. It is so long ago now, my memory is foggy.

[Rusty van Reddick]

I can't believe that some jerkoff from Burnaby submitted Calgary's Eaton Centre as a dead mall with a photo album of pics taken two years earlier (pics Aug 2008, submission 2010) of the "devastatation." I posted comments at his Picasa site. http://deadmalls.com/malls/calgary_eaton_centre.html