Canadian malls buck trend of doom in America
The modern world of consumerism is divided into two groups: Those who love shopping in malls and those who loathe it. Me, I have mixed feelings: awed by the spectacle, horrified by the excess. However you feel about malls, they have shaped the lives of most Canadians.
I grew up in a small town. The middle school I attended was torn down and a mall replaced it. It wasn’t much by today’s standards: two-levels, indoor parking, warm in winter, cool in summer, but, by golly, it was a popular spot - a place downtown where the younger set could hang out away from the pool halls.
Then, several years later, a massive mall went up several miles from the downtown which basically destroyed it, a not uncommon occurrence in small towns and cities in Canada in those days.
When we were kids our parents took us to Toronto where we got an eye-popping look at the future. When it was built in the early 1960s, the Yorkdale Shopping Centre was one of the first and largest enclosed retail malls in the world. Today it is dwarfed in size by sprawling malls in Asia.
As we head into the apex of the Christmas shopping frenzy, it’s interesting to note the difference in mall trends in Canada and the United States. Simply put, malls in America are under siege not by zombies like in Dawn of the Dead - while in Canada, with undoubtedly some exceptions, there appears to be almost a resurgence in mall-mania.
In both countries, “brick and mortar” shopping centres have been the victim of the spectacular boom in on-line purchases, and that’s reflected in part in the retrenching or outright surrender of a multitude of retail outlets, including giants like Sears.
In the United States, though, there is a clear trend to the outright closure of shopping malls due to the collapse of retail traffic. By 2022, according to one report, one in four malls in America could be out of business. Another study says one-third of the 1,200 malls south of the border are either dead or dying.
So stark and disturbing is the withering of American mall culture, there is even a documentary series on Youtube called The Dead Mall Series. It features haunting images of abandoned and crumbling shopping concourses that used to be the community squares of America.
If you’ve ever tried to find a parking spot on the weekend at a typical mall in southern Quebec you’d have few doubts that, over-all, enclosed shopping centres are holding their own against the Internet juggernaut.
The lesson seems to be: invest to compete. One local example is Les Galeries de la Capitale in Quebec City, which, alas, eliminated its skating rink, but is now embarked on a $52 million revamp of its amusement park, among other improvements.
Ironically, the theme of the new rides and attractions harkens back to the Industrial Revolution, where “steam-powered machines, factories, and steel are omnipresent in this retro-futuristic industrial environment.” There also will be a 740-foot skating trail.
The mall owners, Oxford Properties Group - the investment arm of an Ontario pension fund that also owns the above-mentioned Yorkdale centre - have announced plans to build a hotel on the site of the current Maison Simons store.
Simons, in turn, will be moving into a huge space in Les Galeries, formerly occupied by short-lived Target, where the company is building what it calls a “next generation store.” It will be environmentally friendly and packed with digital and interactive technologies to provide a “unique and improved customer experience.”
(Simons, it should be noted, is also mounting a major offensive on the online front, with plans to build a massive new high-tech distribution centre in Quebec City. It’s also launched an innovative on-line shopping app.)
Down in the Townships, the giant Carrefour de l’estrie is investing $44 million to refurbish and expand the mall. It has a tenant occupation rate of more than 90 per cent.
The resilience of the Canadian shopping mall, retail trends aside, might still rest on what drew folks to them in the first place - indoor parking, warm in winter, cool in summer. And where else are you going to meet Santa, but the mall?