{"id":4970,"date":"2009-06-30T09:00:43","date_gmt":"2009-06-30T13:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=4970"},"modified":"2009-06-30T10:41:08","modified_gmt":"2009-06-30T14:41:08","slug":"the-rise-and-fall-of-ontarios-first-regional-mall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2009\/06\/30\/the-rise-and-fall-of-ontarios-first-regional-mall\/","title":{"rendered":"The rise and fall of Ontario’s first regional mall"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In November, 1954, Ontario’s first regional shopping centre opened in East Hamilto<\/a>n<\/a> – the Greater Hamilton Shopping Centre, or better known as Centre Mall<\/a>. While other outdoor plazas opened earlier – Sunnybrook Plaza was Toronto’s first, built several years earlier – Centre Mall was the first mall with traditional anchor department stores surrounded by free parking in Canada. Don Mills Town Centre<\/a>, the first mall with a suburban Eaton’s store, was still a year away when the first Sears store in Canada opened, the first phase of the massive project. Now, it is being replaced by a boring, suburban big-box development.<\/p>\n

Centre Mall, like Toronto’s Dufferin Mall, was built in an urban neighbourhood on the site of a former racetrack. By 1957, the opening of Morgan’s<\/a>, the Montreal-based department store, completed the 100-plus store mall that also included a cinema (later, a bingo hall). A renovation in the late 1960s enclosed the mall, with a later expansion including a food court and a K-Mart store on the north side.<\/p>\n

Centre Mall changed the Ontario retail landscape forever. Downtown Hamilton, only a 15 minute drive or less than a half hour on the Barton trolleybus, was the dominant retail centre, and had several major department stores, including Eaton’s. Other malls quickly followed across the province – but the next major innovation was Yorkdale, the first enclosed regional mall, which opened in 1960.<\/p>\n

By the 1960s, the decline of Downtown Hamilton had the city leadership look to extreme urban renewal as the answer to its woes. A dozen city blocks were cleared for, amongst other things, a new city hall, a shopping mall (Jackson Square), convention hall and cultural centre. Later additions included Copps Colliseum and a new Eaton Centre in the 1980s, but today, that downtown mall is one of the best of a sad lot of downtown Eaton-anchored malls in smaller Ontario cities<\/a>, and every department store closed by the 1997, when Eaton’s shut down.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Inside Centre Mall, July 2008.<\/em><\/p>\n

By the 1990s, the mall that started it all was suffering. The dominant mall in the region became the larger Limeridge Mall, on the Mountain, where land values and incomes were higher than the industrial lower east side. Other malls, such as Eastgate Square, also took their toll. The Bay moved to Eastgate, leaving the original store to become a Zellers, and the K-Mart closed when the chain went under in Canada in 1998.<\/p>\n

By 2008, work began on redeveloping the mall<\/a>,\u00a0 but unlike the rather progressive Don Mills Centre, the new mall will be a simple big-box complex<\/a>, complete with four banks, each with a drive-up bank machine. Buildings along Barton street will turn their backs onto it, facing the internal parking lot. The Sears – the first in Canada – moved into the former Bay store at Eastgate, while the other major stores such as Canadian Tire, Zellers and Shoppers Drug Mart will move into new big-boxes. Independant stores, which found the mall’s lower rents affordable, have either closed, or moved to storefront space on the old retail strips nearby.<\/p>\n

In my earlier post about the new Shops at Don Mills<\/a>, I stated that I had mixed impressions about the centre, though I found the attempt to repurpose an old community mall as a pedestrian-friendly outdoor “lifestyle” at least progressive and interesting. There will be nothing interesting or all that beneficial to the area from this lazy attempt at redevelopment.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nA return to the shuttered Centre Mall, one year later in June 2009.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In November, 1954, Ontario’s first regional shopping centre opened in East Hamilton – the Greater Hamilton Shopping Centre, or better known as Centre Mall. While other outdoor plazas opened earlier – Sunnybrook Plaza was Toronto’s first, built several years earlier – Centre Mall was the first mall with traditional anchor department stores surrounded by freeContinue reading “The rise and fall of Ontario’s first regional mall”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4030,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[24,20],"tags":[779,457,12568,3709,12573,12570,12563,1804,1802,10141,12560,12559,12562,12569,12567,12572,38,12565,636,21,12571,7981,12561,12564,19,12566],"class_list":["post-4970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-urban-design","tag-bay-store","tag-canada","tag-centre-mall","tag-don-mills-centre","tag-don-mills-town-centre","tag-drive-up-bank-machine","tag-eastgate-square","tag-eaton","tag-eaton-centre","tag-food-court","tag-inside-centre-mall","tag-jackson-square","tag-limeridge-mall","tag-mall-in-november","tag-mart-store","tag-mills-town-centre","tag-montreal","tag-montreal-based-department-store","tag-ontario","tag-other-cities","tag-retail-landscape","tag-retail-strips","tag-sears-store","tag-sunnybrook-plaza","tag-toronto","tag-torontos-dufferin-mall"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe rise and fall of Ontario's first regional mall - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2009\/06\/30\/the-rise-and-fall-of-ontarios-first-regional-mall\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The rise and fall of Ontario's first regional mall - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In November, 1954, Ontario’s first regional shopping centre opened in East Hamilton – the Greater Hamilton Shopping Centre, or better known as Centre Mall. 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