Tsawwassen First Nation Updates

[cornholio]

Originally Posted by NewfBC

Commons is not 'phase 2'. It's an entirely separate development.

Ron.

Its on the same site and creates one large shopping center. http://tsawwassencommons.ca/site/

[s211]

Originally Posted by cornholio

Its on the same site and creates one large shopping center. http://tsawwassencommons.ca/site/

Separate ownership, in case that's not clear.

[officedweller]

Originally Posted by mezzanine

Here's the big question - for those that already visited, and not interested in the bass pro niche, would you go there again?

From the perspective of someone living downtown...

The draw would be Saks Off 5th - until they open another location closer to downtown - however, the store not participating in the e-mail "deals" is a reason not to go (and to wait until my next trip to Portland or SoCal).

The Winners and Marshalls are not draws because they are small stores with alternate locations closer to downtown.

If Nordstrom Rack opens, that may be a draw, but they are on the higher end of "off-price".

[connect2source]

Stopped by T Mills yesterday on my way to a new listing in Tsawwassen.

Didn't buy a thing and was underwhelmed. Such a odd assortment of 'outlet' and 'standard' retail, it actually becomes quite confusing.

Shopping for gym clothes, Lulu, Nike and Adidas were 'outlets' but Sportchek wasn't, certainly made for some confusion. As far as Saks Off 5th, was totally unimpressed, most of the product looked like second run 'specifically made for factory store' product, not Saks stuff, same with Harry Rosen, most looked like very old merchandise, shoes were not the same as standard Harry's stock.

Lululemon was real product but very limited selection in small and medium sizes and the product was the runt of the litter, bad colours and odd styles, not worth the $20 savings.

Design of mall is odd, very difficult to cross from one straightaway to the other except for cutting across food court, made for some long journeys. Aesthetics were OK, food court likely the nicest part but mall has a warehouse, outlet feel. Was surprised how quiet it was just days after opening.

Likely won't rush back. Have a big problem with 'car-centric' California style 1990's sprawl, horrible to look at.

[dleung]

Originally Posted by cornholio

North America is a shit hole? Where are you from again?

I shop maybe twice a year (big trips) to get everything I need. The last thing I want to do is run around a congested city, looking for stores, getting my car broken into and wasting my precious time. What I want to do is get in my car, drive for 20 short min, park at a large mall that has everything, get out do all my shopping in one go, get back in my car and go home. I want to do this twice a year at most. Through out the year if I need something I google it and get it where ever is closer.

I can care less about someones grand social engineering plan and desire to cram millions of people from the rest of the world into the city and make us all ration everything. I want convenience. This mall brings precisely that, google maps says its 22min away from my house. That works for me.

I would have to be bat shit crazy to drive in to downtown or into the urban core into the mayhem to search for stores to do my shopping twice a year, hopping around. Oh and this mall is closer to me then downtown Vancouver (and I live in Vancouver).

I'm from Syria. That means we should embrace the LA model, right?

My grand social engineering plan is for everyone to live in 1500sf apartments with planted terraces and views, take transit 95% of the time, and use car share to go snowboarding or pick up a TV from Best Buy. If you know what you're getting, get it delivered. We're being extremely inefficient and anti-social in the current model. The only reason we think it's efficient is because the subsidizing of private car use is so ingrained in our politics/planning/budgeting of public funds/etc. Spending half a day at a "destination mall" is for chumps. Make the city the destination. If the whole city is equally-dense (even just Fairview Slopes levels of density), there will be critical mass for amenities close to everyone.

[ryanmaccdn]

Originally Posted by dleung

Of course most of North America is a shit hole. It's supposed to be better here.

I'm totally fine with big box stores - economy of scale is the way of the future. There are Costcos, Home Depots, Save on Foods, etc located in downtown Vancouver in the podiums of high-density projects.

Sticking this in the middle of nowhere doesn't "drive the economy"; it just forces people to drive and get diabetes, forces infrastructure money to go to roads instead of transit, thus disincentivizing urban living, in a vicious cycle.

Those locations usually operate at a huge loss....something the margins at Mills malls can't do.

[libtard]

Originally Posted by dleung

I'm from Syria. That means we should embrace the LA model, right?

My grand social engineering plan is for everyone to live in 1500sf apartments with planted terraces and views, take transit 95% of the time, and use car share to go snowboarding or pick up a TV from Best Buy. If you know what you're getting, get it delivered. We're being extremely inefficient and anti-social in the current model. The only reason we think it's efficient is because the subsidizing of private car use is so ingrained in our politics/planning/budgeting of public funds/etc. Spending half a day at a "destination mall" is for chumps. Make the city the destination. If the whole city is equally-dense (even just Fairview Slopes levels of density), there will be critical mass for amenities close to everyone.

You're dream if it ever came to fruition would cause the economy to collapse. 0 growth.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by ryanmaccdn

Those locations usually operate at a huge loss....something the margins at Mills malls can't do.

Do you have any proof that any of these downtown locations operate at a huge loss?

[LeftCoaster]

None of those locations operate at a loss.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by dleung

Of course most of North America is a shit hole. It's supposed to be better here.

I'm totally fine with big box stores - economy of scale is the way of the future. There are Costcos, Home Depots, Save on Foods, etc located in downtown Vancouver in the podiums of high-density projects.

Sticking this in the middle of nowhere doesn't "drive the economy"; it just forces people to drive and get diabetes, forces infrastructure money to go to roads instead of transit, thus disincentivizing urban living, in a vicious cycle.

Damn mall gave me da diabetes.

[GMasterAres]

Just got home from a trip out east and had a chance to head over to T.Mills with the wife. Went there for some breakfast, wandered around, then had lunch at the Bass Pro Restaurant.

My general impressions first are that people that post nothing but negative comments (aka nothing positive) would do so no matter what so I think most of you looking for real comments should just ignore these people. They're about as biased as a Donald Trump spokesperson.

That said, and you now fully convinced to listen to MY opinion... my thoughts.

1. Was a bit disappointed not all the stores were opened. There were a few that we actually wanted to check out but oh well.

2. It felt like we walked a few KM the mall is quite large. They could use with a few more "cut through" corridors half way between the ends and the food court. I did find it a bit inefficient if we wanted to check something out we passed a bit ago, felt like a long walk around to get back.

That said it feels a lot better than the Seattle Outlet mall which I find you have to back track a lot at. This mall you can just do 1 circle and you've seen everything.

3. Food court is nice, good selection, and food was fine though I wouldn't put any food court up there in price to taste ratio.

4. Mall was nice and clean and both my wife and I really like the art work. It has a good feel to it, really presents a native flavor, and livens up the place. I think they did a really good job. Mall also seems quite lit as they have quite a few skylight windows. Today not the best example as it was grey and raining, but it was nice to look up and out and have a bit more natural light coming in taking away from the fact you're in a giant box.

5. Stores, we only picked up a few things as both my wife and I aren't crazy shoppers. I did find it a bit confusing with respect to what store is an outlet vs a full store. You walk into one and they are 60% off everything as it is an outlet, then walk in the next and shirts men's shirts are $149 each. Was kind of like wtf.

For the selection though I was fairly impressed with the lineup. Let's face it most malls are 90% clothes and shoes it seems and this is really no different. Also they target women which unfortunately probably makes up 5% of the people on these forums thus why you have a bunch of men on here complaining about a mall when shopping malls are really not targeting them. But they have a fair assortment of other things from a kids toy store, to a furniture store, and several specialty stores that did keep my interest.

I don't think this mall is going to be a huge draw for people downtown but it is definitely a change for the South of Fraser area. Fairly certain this mall can compete for selection with Guildford mall. Yes Guildford has many more stores and some alternate selection items (T.Mills has no electronics stores for example like an Apple store, EBGames, or Source) but for a lot of people in South Surrey or Delta, this mall would negate the need to go to Guildford or most other malls.

Also think it would negate the need to really go downtown or North of Fraser other than maybe Richmond to get unique selection.

So from a store perspective I think it will do ok.

6. People count, now this is what I found interesting. I felt th emall was quite busy. I've been in Guildford on a Friday at 10am, on a Wednesday mid day, quite frankly most of the time. Heck I've been to Metrotown multiple times at the start of the day or midway through a week, and T.Mills today at 10am was noticably busier. The fact the mall is so large and many of the anchors equally large I think makes it appear as though it is a lot more empty, but we stood for a few minutes and within eye shot one direction I counted at least 100 people before I decided to stop, and that was maybe 1/10th the mall I could see. Parking lot was also half full all sides when we left at 2pm. Far cry from absolutely filled, but Guildford and Metrotown are no different most of the time. It's not like the other mall sin metro Vancouver have 10,000 people walking shoulder to shoulder 24/7. Truely though we'll have to wait and see how things are in 6 months to a year time when the gloss has worn off and the opening sales end to really say.

7. Final impressions, I think when you add in the Commons area which is absolutely obscenly large + this mall, you're going to get a very stead clientel going to this mall from all over the area. I actually think this is far more important for South of Fraser than anywhere else in Metro Vancouver.

There is just no need for anyone North of Fraser to drive out to this mall but I don't think that's the point. 50% of the region's population lives on the other side of the river and quite frankly it SUCKS ASS to cross the Fraser if you don't have to and will only get worse when the GMB is under construction at the same time as the Patullo and the Alex Fraser Bridge is an absolute parking lot as they construct proper interchanges at the SFPR.

So for the 1500 per month people who move SoF every month between Delta, Surrey, and Langley, this mall is not a bad thing nor will go unused. I also think it will help Delta spark some development drive in South Delta between Ladner and Tsawwassen. Metro Vancouver has on the books for Tsawwassen alone to grow to 40,000 people in the next 25 years, which commercial space like this and commons can help bring people to live and work.

That said this is a bit pie in the sky but I still hold the opinion that this isn't as ridiculous as some would think and while it has some head scratching spots, my wife and I left fairly impressed with what they've done.

Definitely will go back at some point as there are some draws other than Guildford and the Bass Pro is actually quite nice and has stuff Whole Sale Sports doesn't in Langley.

I don't think it will be a huge draw for people downtown though as Metrotown is just a skytrain away. Wasn't built for those of you downtown though quite frankly and the draw of population isn't going to make or break. Remember there is about 200,000 out of 2.5 million downtown + False Creek. For those doing math every person living downtown and around downtown Vancouver make up 8% of the region's population. You're not actually that important to business South of Fraser contrary to popular belief.

[Klazu]

Not sure if this has been mentioned before, but I found this very interesting as there are similarities with Tsawwassen mall. St. Louis Mills opened in 2003 is similar mega-size outlet mall in steep decline. This recent video looks almost creepy.

• Video Link

Very interesting comments on Reddit about what went wrong and about outlet mall design in general!

Wow, that's spiraling down fast, now. But I'm not surprised. I've been predicting this since it opened.

There's this book that I keep recommending to people called Edge City, by Joel Garreau, a cultural geographer. He got big-money real estate developers to walk him through the scientific and mathematical research that they did, back in the '70s and early '80s, that explains virtually everything about why the outer-ring suburbs look the way that they do. There's an entire chapter in there about mall design. Developers had put serious statistical analysis in to what design features make a mall succeed or fail. St. Louis Mills broke every single one of them.

A few examples that I can remember off the top of my head: you never, ever, ever make a straight hallway longer than 600 feet, or a curved hallway much over 1000 feet. If the average American can see that it's more than 600 feet from where they're at to the store they want to go to, they'll leave and go back to their car, intending to drive around to a closer entrance. But, studies showed, once in their car, half of them decide to just simply go home. You can trick them into walking 1000 feet if it's a visually busy place -- sculpture, gardens, fountains -- and even then, only if they can't see that it's more than 600 feet, so the corridor has to turn at least once. Any farther than that and they won't go; it's too far to walk. They also won't go up or down more than one escalator flight.

That's why almost every mall in America has a center entrance on the middle floor of a three story mall, with two or three wings of 1000' length, each wing curved at least once in the middle.

They also said that a successful outer-ring suburb always follows the same pattern: [one million square feet of commercial real estate, roughly a third of it in the form of a mall, at the intersection of two major highways. Somewhere nearby, in the same municipality, you need at least half that in industrial real estate, to pay the tax bills to maintain the infrastructure. Within 20 minutes to half an hour of that intersection you need enough affordable housing to provide the workers and customers. Within 20 minutes to half an hour upwind of that intersection, you need at least one neighborhood that CEOs and executive vice presidents would be willing to live in.

St. Louis Mills Mall is a single-story mall, each wing laid out in a straight line of almost a mile, alongside a minor highway spur (in a floodplain no less!), nowhere near the intersection of the highways on either end, surrounded almost entirely by agricultural property and most of an hour's drive from any serious number of potential customers or employees.

I remember news articles at the time about how they were building a mall that didn't depend on anchor department stores, that would depend on sporting and fitness and entertainment anchors, which would attract a younger, fitter crowd, which (combined with the location) would let them build a cheaper, one-story sprawling building and offer cheaper rents which would result in lower prices which would make it a day-long weekend shopping destination for people as far away as Iowa.

What a waste of money.

Yeah, sounds a bit like Tsawwassen Mills, especially in terms of location, eh? Also this was interesting in my opinion...

In addition to all the architectural and location issues you pointed out, this place was full of poor quality tenants from the day they cut the ribbon. Stuff like

the no-name leather goods shop, whose prized piece of merchandise hanging from the ceiling was that $2500 jacket with Scarface on the back
a shop stocked with nothing but "as seen on TV" infomercial products, and even worse Chinese knockoffs thereof
a shop called Primarily Purple that had, well, just random stuff, the only common thing was it was all purple

My wife and I called the place the "Simpsons Mall" because it literally is as if the property developer used the parody of an outlet mall from the Simpsons as a template for building this place. With the crappy stores, you expected to get to the end of one of those long concourses and find a Leftorium.

They also had things like the Gap, Banana Republic, and Saks outlets, but by the time the Mills opened these brands had all wised up and realized rather than sell items that were out-of-season/style closeouts, they'd sell things that are in-season but made cheaper and crappier just for outlets.

While all above likely has contributed to the failure of the mall, this is likely the final reason. I feel like Tsawwassen won't have this kind of problem which sounds very specific to a city like St. Louis...

That's not why the mall failed. That mall was crazy busy all the time for quite a while.

Seriously.. I guess I'm the only one old enough to have worked at the Mills when it opened, and watched first hand its decline.

When Jamestown Mall and a few other "urban..." malls closed, they all flooded the Mills. What resulted were literal gang fights inside, and outside the mall. I was working IN the food court when a massive one broke out with gunshots and everything. There were also several shootings in the parking lot and random other fights. All. the. time.

The food court one was the main thing. It was such a dramatic change after that. It went from crazy busy ALL THE TIME to ..what you saw in the video. In one day. All it took was for that fight to hit the news.

SO what you said may have maybe had something to do with it? But not from what I saw first-hand. The mall was ALWAYS packed before that. I made a shit ton of money. (I didn't work at a restaurant, I worked at a kiosk right outside the food court.)

Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/StLouis/comments/51evgi/if_you_havent_been_there_in_a_while_this_is_the/

[connect2source]

Fascination post Klazu!!! Having just walked the entire mall, St. Louis Mills looks eerily similar to T-Mills, similar hallway width, ceiling height, exposed duct work, with so many of the same issues and shortcomings.

T-Mills has endlessly long straightaways with nowhere to cut over and access the parallel straightaway except at the food court. Distances are way too long. I've run 5 marathons in my life and almost gave up finding some of the shops due to distance.

Many of the tenants are the also 'no-name' 'pop-up' type temporary stores where zero money was spent on the build-outs. It actually detracts from the overall appeal of the mall and it seems perhaps a stop gap as better tenants couldn't be sourced before then grand opening.

I feel the location is also bizarre, virtually no transit connections and an area few ever travel to except to catch a BC Ferry.

Once the few draws like Off 5th and Bass Pro open more locations around Metro Van, I feel the mall will be toast.

Incredible to think T-Mills was based on an already failed model in the US.

[Pinion]

On the other hand St Louis has a depressed economy and a sprawling, declining population and some of the worst crime in the country in some parts (not sure about that part) and has no asian population and is nothing like Tsawassen.

Not saying T-mills won't fail but many American malls have been dying for decades and we don't have the same conditions.

[BobLoblawsLawBlog]

And rightfully so. We really don't need more generic malls in the world. If we could build more malls like Metropolis that'd be great.

[Klazu]

PBS has also made an interesting bit on dying malls few years ago. Seems that in America changing demographics and economical downturn has been demise of many malls, but also location and lack of draw-factor can contribute to a slow decline.

Vancouver has a very different demographics and for example Asian people love shopping. It's a hobby for many, but the malls needs to be lavish and full of experiences. I am sure that the new malls next to transit and huge town center in Burnaby will do great also in the future, but I am not 100% convinced on the success of Tsawwassen Mills long term. Time will tell.

• Video Link

[officedweller]

Even the Sherman Oaks Galleria (of Valley Girl fame) closed in 1999.
http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/views/y/1999/04/mcdermott.mall.apr15/

Originally Posted by connect2source

Fascination post Klazu!!! Having just walked the entire mall, St. Louis Mills looks eerily similar to T-Mills, similar hallway width, ceiling height, exposed duct work, with so many of the same issues and shortcomings.

That's a standard "look" for an outlet mall.

Former Auburn Supermall looks the same (now called "The Outlet Collection Seattle").
https://www.facebook.com/outletseattle

[connect2source]

Here's the layout of St. Louis Mills, almost identical to Tsawwassen Mills

source : http://www.stlouisoutletmall.com/pdfs/directory.pdf

[officedweller]

Wow that is close.

[Klazu]

I was last weekend in Seattle and was staying in Renton near the huge mall there (biggest in Seattle, I think). I just find these American mega malls and outlets so off-putting and ugly. It felt almost like a culture shock as we don't (thankfully) have the same fully car-dependent malls here in Vancouver. Yes, we have smaller malls with lots of parking, but nothing like the ones in America. Tsawwessen Mills is definitely a book example of an American outlet mall and I find it disgusting.

Of course I am far from the average shopper or even their target audience, as I hate shopping and do it mostly online...