Mall Retail (Cambridge Centre, Conestoga, Fairview)

[MidTowner]

I’ve always learned that London was considered to be a bellwether market by many retailers, so is earlier on their list of expansion plans- supposedly success in London has been seen to be a strong indicator of success in other smaller Canadian markets, so London was tackled earlier than it might otherwise be for its size. It’s also far enough from Toronto that it can support things that communities nearer to Toronto of a similar size cannot.

I’m not sure that Masonville has been the dominant mall in London for very long, but it certainly has been lately. White Oaks has been the more important mall for out-of-towners, but I don’t think it’s nearly so common for people to take a big shopping trip to the city to visit a number of stores as it was ten or twenty years ago. White Oaks is struggling now, along with all of the others.

As a relative newcomer to the Region, I’ve been under the impression that Conestoga was the top-tier mall, and would continue to be. I’ve only gathered this from what I hear people talking about. But to me, rather than a good sign, CF’s willingness to build a new building for Wal Mart separate from the mall shows a lack of leverage- Fairview needs Wal Mart more than the other way around. It sounds a lot like what other malls are doing, abandoning the traditional mall format for a more big box type set-up, just to survive.