In a post on the Seattle Transit Blog – “Tear Down the Malls, Build Housing” – commenter ChrisC provides a list that effectively makes the link between profitable mall retail and rapid transit (and half are in Canada):
Of the top 12 malls in North America in sales per square foot, five have a subway station directly attached. Considering how low a percentage of total malls have a subway station attached, that is remarkable:
1. Pacific Centre, Vancouver BC Canada: $1580/sq ft (subway station)
2. Caesar’s Palace, Las Vegas NV USA: $1470/sq ft
3. Toronto Eaton Centre, Toronto ON Canada: $1320/sq ft (subway station)
4. Yorkdale Shopping Centre, Toronto ON Canada: $1300/sq ft (subway station)
5. Ala Moana Shopping Centre, Honolulu HI USA: $1250/sq ft
6. Oakridge Shopping Centre, Vancouver BC Canada: $1200/sq ft (subway station)
7. Chinook Centre, Calgary AB Canada: $1055/sq ft
8. Mall at Short Hills, Short Hills NJ USA: $1050/sq ft
9. Mall at Millenia, Orlando FL USA: $1040/sq ft
10. Rideau Centre, Ottawa ON Canada: $1020/sq ft
11: Sherway Gardens, Toronto ON Canada: $950
12: Fairview Mall, Toronto ON Canada: $880/sq ft (subway station)
Caesar’s Palace does have a sort of mickey mouse monorail – but it is very discretely hidden
https://www.flickr.com/photos/philip-rosie/155541180/
Unfortunately, Pacific Centre Mall sucked people underground and Granville Street has suffered for decades. Only in the last few years has Granville seen better street retail and pedestrian activity. I like to think that’s partly due to the Canada Line with several hundred people entering the street from the stations every five minutes (added to the bus mall activity), and the doubling of the downtown population.
They do not roll up the downtown sidewalks after 6 every night in this town.
Perhaps the excessive amount of strange, smelly and homeless people allowed to loiter on Granville is a key deterrent to shopping. Most malls are private property and such behaviour is not tolerated.
Social housing for such folks is vital, as is a policy that disallows loitering. No wonder people chose to take their shopping $s elsewhere.
Btw, how is the new mall near the airport or in Tsawwassen doing ?
When loitering is banned only criminals will loiter.
European cities evolved to include the enjoyment of public space. North American cities were often specifically designed to ensure everyone would just keep moving along. If you stop somewhere you must be up to no good. For a long time Granville “Mall” had no benches. The few places that are not too-narrow sidewalks are designed to keep people from even thinking of stopping.
We see it in our terrible downtown “plazas”, the left over corner of a larger development: awful places that few ever use. Nothing of human value faces these spaces. That was no accident.
Privatizing urban space is a terrible plan. it is the biggest flaw inherent in the urbanization of former shopping mall parking lots. Cities should demand a return of a street network within these properties in exchange for the increased density.
Indeed. The entire urban public realm needs rethinking. With the exception of parks, public pedestrian spaces are pathetic here entirely because they are the leftover scraps of land once the automobile conduit network is done, or once an architect completes the design of a building with little regard to the open space that surrounds it (e.g. VPL).
The VAG plaza may turn out to be somewhat of an exception, but it is still does not meet some of the basic criteria that makes public pedestrian space successful, one of which is to surround it with human-scale endeavours (shops, cafes) instead of roads. Jan Gehl has looked at this issue for a half century and has many illuminating insights in his informative books.
I think cities should encourage and reward developers who redesign former mall parking lots to inject genuine publicly-owned pedestrian streets and plazas deep into the otherwise private development, and anchor them with public amenities like libraries, schools, community centres, rapid transit stations, police precincts and municipal offices. Glassed-over public streets could have great potential in this cold country on former mall sites.
Regarding the dearth of good pedestrian open space, I would make an exception for Vancouver’s delightful seawall system.
Keep in mind most European cities were pedestrian oriented as they had no cars when they designed the cities 1000 or even only 300 years ago. Just a few horses and carriages. North American cities, by and large, and certainly Vancouver, grew essentially with the car. As such the grid with no plazas or even pedestrian zones. Robson should be one, all the way from stadium to Stanley park. Alberni too say 2-4 blocks west of Burrard. Or S-Ganville from 8th to 16th.
Plus no tolerance for homeless folks to sit and pan handle or worse, sleep there all night or sometimes, all day. Some folks ought to be locked up in secure mental facilities, and some merely provided with shelter and food, for free. Far cheaper on the public than the drug overdose and hospital abuse by these people. Some folks just can’t look after themselves and as such society ought to.
I might add that Granville, for all its failings, is doing fairly well as a shopping street. People are bringing their money here – unlike all the failing malls all over North America.
There may be a slight change suggested in the wording:
“…makes the link between [highly] profitable mall retail and rapid transit …”
Those are the TOP malls listed – not the “break even” malls versus the “money losing” malls….
And of course the Rideau Centre in Ottawa will be directly connected to the Confederation Line in 2018 and already has extensive bus service while the Ala Moana Center in Honolulu will be connected to the second phase of the Honolulu Rail Transit project when it’s finally complete (currently set down for 2025). The Ala Moana Center is already a major hub for The Bus.
I wonder where Metrotown sits on the list…?
Metrotown could be fairly high on the list of retail success. But seriously? It’s pretty low by any urban design measure. One of the biggest mistakes the mall meisters committed was to erase 2 1/2 blocks of small storefronts on the south side of Kingsway and replace them with 30,000 m2 of asphalt parking lots even though rapid transit was planned there at the same time. Another big mistake was to provide a pathetic pedestrian link from the mall to Metrotown Station. Ideally, the station would be underground with an entry emerging from a public plaza in the heart of the development.
Not holding it up as any kind of design paragon by any means, even in a mall category, just curious as to where it ranks because it does have quite amazing transit service/access, and as Guest notes, is very busy seemingly *all the time*
Metrotown is now a very cheap mall environment, catering primarily to middle and lower end Asian buyers these days. Those with cash, both Asian and non-Asian, go elsewhere, by car or subway.
The tenant mix at Metropolis at Metrotown wouldn’t place it in the top of the list.
By and large, the malls on that list have focussed on a high end luxury tenant mix – to rack up the $$$ per square foot.
Metropolis at Metrotown is a bit disorganized / jumbled and does not have a “luxury wing” for example. That’s probably because it is the merger of 2 formerly separate malls (Eaton Centre Metrotown and Metrotown Centre). Many of the store there also cater to younger shoppers, rather than high end shoppers.
Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s not successful. Metrotown Station is the busiest station outside of downtown and I think it may be the busiest on weekends.