Fairview Park Mall - Grand Market District

[dtkvictim]

Can the two even be compared? Fairview Park Mall is in an older part of the city without a whole lot of new development around it. It has always been considered one of the main malls here so everyone knows it. It's connected to the highway, LRT, bus routes and has a fairly sizable residential area next to it. It gets a lot of regular road traffic as well. I've always thought of Fairview and Conestoga Mall as somewhere people feel more inclined to shop because it's indoors, there's seating, lots of food/drink and even a massive movie theatre.

The Boardwalk is way out in the middle of suburbia where you absolutely need a car...even to just go from one store to another. I've always thought the Boardwalk would have more competition due to its design. It feels more comparable to Sportsworld Crossing or SmartCentres Cambridge which are now both just barren wastelands nobody really goes to, which goes to show you how successful these sort of places are in the long term. A mall has and always will be somewhere people go to shop and hang out. Nobody goes to the Boardwalk or a SmartCentre development for fun.

I don't know, I don't think I know a single person who still "goes to the mall". It basically died out completely as a concept from the people I know, and it's certainly not a place anyone I know would go to "hang out". On the other hand, during the regular year, I probably end up at the boardwalk more than a dozen times just secondhand being a passenger in a car. My parent's generation seem to genuinely love it, and prefer the boardwalk style of shopping over all of the alternatives. People in my generation I think are pretty indifferent; they are driving to their destination anyways, so it doesn't matter if it's in one wasteland or another.