A ‘minor’ reconfiguration

Sears heritage facade could be altered as mall finds new use for store

KITCHENER — The heritage facade of the Sears building at Fairview Park mall could change under new plans for the soon-to-be-vacant store.

The 140,000-square-foot Sears building is a major feature of the mall, but it will be vacant within weeks. The Sears store that anchors the mall, and which opened in 1965 before the rest of the mall was completed, is set to shut for good in January.

Sears Canada is winding down its business, and the inventory of all the 130 Sears stores across the country is being liquidated.

The building, with its distinctive ribbed, pre-cast concrete exterior, isn’t protected with a heritage designation, but is listed on the city’s register of properties of heritage value.

Cadillac Fairview, which owns Fairview Park mall and the Sears building, will announce plans for the store early in 2018, said Finley McEwen, the company’s senior vicepresident of development.

He wouldn’t reveal details, but said in the short term, the building would undergo “minor reconfiguration” both inside and out.

Current retail trends are for livelier, more animated exteriors, instead of the “blank exterior walls” of a traditional department store, McEwen said.

Malls are moving away from large anchor tenants such as department stores, and more toward smaller stores and a more varied, entertainment-oriented approach that presents shoppers with a livelier exterior that could include bigger windows, patios and restaurants, digital screen displays or rooftop terraces, he said.

Kitchener has no plans to increase the building’s heritage protection, said Leon Bensason, the city’s co-ordinator of cultural heritage planning.

Cadillac Fairview would “go through the normal public process” if it redevelops or

alters the building, McEwen said.

Under heritage rules, a property owner must give the city 60 days’ notice if it wants to demolish a building listed on the heritage register. That period allows council to move to protect the building from demolition by designating it, if it so chooses.

A property owner also needs to carry out a heritage impact assessment, a study that looks at how a proposed development or alteration could affect the heritage attributes of a property, and recommends ways to reduce that impact.

The Sears building is significant both as “a rare and unique example of the Kennedy Era International Modern architectural style,” and because it’s one of the first structures in this part of Ontario to be built entirely out of precast concrete.

The walls, floors, roof and all beams and posts were precast, transported to the site and hoisted into place by crane. The six-metre, white vertically lined panels that cover all four walls of the building each weigh 7,250 kilograms, topping 2.5metre-high walls of dark green glazed brick.

When it opened, the store was the 19th outlet in the Simpson-Sears chain and the main tenant for the first suburban mall in Kitchener.

McEwen said the store’s exterior could also be affected when the region proceeds with the second phase of light rail transit, which would run trains from Fairview Park mall to Cambridge.

“That store is impacted by the Ion Phase 2, regardless of our own development plans,” McEwen said. “The dotted line (route) basically clips the corner of the building, one-quarter or one-third of which will have to be demolished or reconfigured for Phase 2.”

However, the Region of Waterloo says details about how Phase 2 will affect properties won’t be known until 2019. The exact route hasn’t been determined, nor is there a set construction date, or any money set aside to build it.