Canadian shoppers are idiots.
Recently I had the chance to peruse the Weyburn City Centre Mall. I had visited the Smitty's there before, but never had actually seen the rest of the facility.
I was amazed at how empty it was. The former anchor tenant, the Co-op, was long gone. Most of the rented space was occupied by various forms of government, including the Southeast Regional College and Service Canada. If not for the college, the place would be nearly vacant. Nearly all private enterprise had abandoned this mall. A cellphone kiosk had a sign noting they had moved to a building near the Subway, a block or two away.
I should have clued in on this over a year ago when I did a story about a defensive driving course running in the parking lot of this mall. This is not a large parking lot, yet they were able to pylon off enough of it to practise loss-of-control spin techniques.
This is just one example of little used malls I have seen throughout Saskatchewan.
I can't speak for the last four years, but for much of the 10 years we were in North Battleford, the Frontier Mall was little used, especially after Walmart moved to its own building. Without an anchor tenant, that end of the mall withered until finally it was turned into medical offices.
It has been a long time since I've been to Kindersley, but the last time I was there, the mall was pretty empty too. That may have changed with the growth of the oilpatch in the region. The mall's website showing leasing opportunities shows about half occupancy, however.
Yorkton used to have two malls. I can't remember the name of the second one. We used to call it the "Zellers Mall" when I was a kid. In the 1990s, it too, was largely vacant, especially after Zellers left. Eventually it was demolished and a casino now stands on the site.
The Estevan Shoppers Mall was a repeat of the scenarios until recently. When we first moved here in 2008, you could fire a cannon down the hall and never hit anyone. I suspect the growth of the oilpatch has fuelled its revival, with many of the formerly vacant stalls now filled. But not all are, I must point out.
With Estevan and Weyburn's economies so similar, it begs the question of how Estevan's mall has seen a resurgence, but Weyburn's is but a shell.
Yorkton's Parkland Mall has, over the years, largely done well. Rarely has it seemed more vacant than full. Perhaps that's because it was large enough to have a critical mass of varied stores, combined with being in a community with the third largest trading area in the province after Saskatoon and Regina.
Malls throughout North America have been suffering. No one wants them for some reason. The preference for retailers is now to have their own location with an outside door. That might be fine on the warmer half of the continent, but here, where there can be snow on the ground for as much as six months of the year, it's idiocy. It just goes to prove Canadian shoppers need their collective heads examined.
To think: Shopping in a warm, climate controlled environment, with no snow to tromp through - what's not to like? Malls may not be cities in a bubble, but they're the next-best thing. Usually they've got lots of parking, too, except for a few days in December.
Indoor malls, not strip malls, should be the first place occupied by retailers. I don't know if it's the mall's lease rates that are killing them, or they are just out of vogue, but I would much rather have a warm shopping experience than a cold one.
Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected]
