Quote:
Originally Posted by fenwick16
I think the real reason is: when downtown Vancouver and downtown Toronto were being developed in the 60's and 70's the focus was on multi-level malls. On the other hand, the newer suburb areas have "power centers" for a couple of reasons:
1) Retailers want to be able to open for extended hours if they so please without having to pay the overhead associated with security and overhead of an entire mall. They also want to have parking in close vicinity to their store.
2) Consumers have shown that they prefer the power center concept where they can just drive up to their selected store without wandering through a mall. This is evidenced by all the dead, dying and demolished malls in North America. I don't think it is a good idea to try to force malls on people who don't want them. However, since the younger generation doesn't seem to drive as much, maybe that will change?
Here are a couple aerial map links to power centers in Mississauga - https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.59841.../data=!3m1!1e3 and https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.61440.../data=!3m1!1e3. The second Mississauga example dwarfs Dartmouth Crossings - https://www.google.ca/maps/@44.70503.../data=!3m1!1e3. The Mississauga example is a mix of industrial and expansive commercial/retail (so if you include Burnside with Dartmouth Crossing they might be comparable). It may not be pretty, but it certainly is popular.
Well, you might be thinking that this is just Mississauga ; however, I can give examples of power centers in Milton, Oakville and Burlington; and these are just in the western suburbs of Toronto.
Here is a smaller one that is popping up in Hamilton - https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.19494.../data=!3m1!1e3. Just a positive note: consider Hamilton that was going through a period of slow growth due to reductions in the steel industry, its power center on the mountain looks rather small; isn't it somewhat encouraging that the Halifax Metro area can support the Dartmouth Crossing, which will get much larger once IKEA opens? Let's face it, places like IKEA would not have located in the developed areas of central Halifax.
I could go on and on with examples, but I have failed in my attempt to keep this post concise
|
Interestingly, when I spoke with employees at the Apple store at HSC about why they chose to locate at HSC as opposed to on Spring Garden or in one of the business parks (they said SGR was definitely in the final running) was that a lot of Apple's internal consumer research found that customers in colder climates (I guess Canada!) prefer the mall experience because they can enter the mall and do shopping through out, avoiding bad weather and cold temps. By contrast, you cannot do that downtown, nor out in big box parks.
I think the dead suburban malls in North America is not a story about malls but merely a product of the slow death of suburbs themselves in the long term. Baby Boomers generation bought into, and expanded, the suburbs but now in retirement are leaving them for downtowns. Millennials unlike their parents prefer urban environments. Suburban malls are dying as a result.
Big boxes aren't dying as quickly as they have often been built in locations that serve both surburban and urban populations, creating congestion and sprawl costs both ways. But they'll also have to change in the long term as well, or they'll likewise die like suburban strip malls. Even IKEA which is the prototypical big box store is realizing that for its long term survival, it needs to come up with a different model to serve the new urban consumer base.
http://www.mnn.com/money/sustainable...periments-with
And it's not just IKEA, Walmart and other big boxes are distancing themselves from unsustainable sprawl parks:
http://www.retaildive.com/news/going...stores/356248/
The problem for Halifax, is that we've done a terrible job at protecting and strengthening our downtown until very very recently, and instead catered to big box parks that have simply gotten out of control. Downtown has suffered and declined, and so there is less need or pressure for retailers to attempt urban formatting when it's far more cheaper to open up in Dartmouth Crossing, because our tax and regulatory structure favor business parks far, far, more.
These changes will eventually arrive here too, just simply due to the demographics I've mentioned. Housing starts in the suburbs, for example, are down dramatically in Halifax and they are not going to recover. Urban format shops will come, but like urbanization in Nova Scotia more generally, we'll be a decade or so behind the rest of Canada due to our regressive policies, regulations, and shortsighted city politicians/staffers.
FWIW, I'm happy IKEA is coming, but was hoping that we would be the location for one of its first smaller urban format shops, rather than a traditional big box style. Halifax seems to be an ideal location for such an experiment because all of the students are located on the peninsula and Dartmouth Crossing is poorly serviced by transit. In Toronto, I was car-less and hated having to try to figure out how to get my crap back downtown, and that was even with an IKEA served almost directly by the TTC. I think students in Halifax would also far prefer to be able to walk to an IKEA urban format shop downtown on SGR, pick items out of a catalogue, and have smaller items there for immediate pick up (much like Argos does with urban format shops in England) and have bigger items delivered direct to their place in a few days-- rather than finding a way to get out to Dartmouth Crossing and then find a way to lug all their crap back with them (if they want to avoid delivery costs). If students have to pay for delivery anyways, why force them to go all the way out to Dartmouth Crossing to order? Urban format here could be wildly successful.