The arrival of the shopping mall changed our history in Newmarket and across Canada, as consumers shifted away from family-run local stores to mega malls.
Let's take a brief look at the emergence of the mall shopping experience. Experts tell us there have been three main stages in the development of shopping centres in North America: the uncovered mall, enclosed mall, and mega mall.
One of the first mall shopping experiences dates back to the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, Mo. in 1922. Colonnades, plazas, park-and-shops, strip malls, started to pop up in Canada in the 1950s. Following the Second World War, populations had begun to shift from cities to the suburbs, thanks to an increase in car use.
New shopping centres were built for this new demographic that no longer frequented the traditional downtown shopping districts like our Main Street.
Canada’s first shopping centre was the West Vancouver Park Royal Shopping Centre, which opened in September 1950 as an open-air mall with Woodward’s as one of the original developers and tenants.
In the fall of 1953, the Boulevard Shopping Centre opened as the first uncovered mall in northeast Montreal and was once the largest shopping centre in Canada. It featured covered walks from bus stops to all stores, landscaped parks and rest stations. Expansion into malls in other suburban areas quickly followed with locations such as the Dorval Shopping Centre, the Lawrence Plaza in northwest Toronto, and the Greater Hamilton Shopping Centre.
A 1954 annual report by the Retail Association of Toronto indicated that while it was still too early to tell whether the venture would be successful, “there is a definite retail trend in this direction, and commitments have been made for the opening of two more stores in similar developments in the Toronto area.”
The trend toward bigger and better centres would eventually lead to the development of huge malls intended to draw tourists as well as local shoppers.
In 1956, enclosed malls became the new standard. Customers no longer had to brave the elements to get from store to store, and in the summer, they could shop in air-conditioned comfort. Many of the older-style open malls would eventually convert to this style, often as part of the large mall expansions starting in the early 1960s.
These new malls provided a wider range of stores and services, including restaurants, and public spaces for special events.
In the beginning, malls had been anchored by a single key tenant, however, the larger malls could sustain additional internal competition. In 1958, Simpson’s and Eaton’s made history by both opening stores in the Yorkdale Shopping Centre in North York. At that time, it was, according to its promotional literature, “Canada’s largest regional shopping centre and one of the world’s most extensive.” It cost $25 million to build and contained more than 100 stores.
It was inevitable as competition between the malls grew, developers would scramble to build bigger and better shopping centres. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, huge mega malls were being opened to cater to family entertainment and tourist dollars as well as retailing. The best example of the mega mall concept is the West Edmonton Mall, which has a lagoon/ice rink and indoor roller-coaster.
The retail environment in Newmarket mirrored what was happening nationwide, although sometimes delayed by a few years.
I have chronicled the appearance of new open or string shopping plazas on the recently developed farmland around Newmarket in several of my earlier columns on NewmarketToday.
READ MORE HERE: Newmarket's first big plaza opens in 1961; Sale of farmland paved way for Newmarket's first 'shopping plaza'; Hospital expansion, mall part of '70s construction boom.
For more than 100 years, the downtown area of Newmarket had been the primary shopping district and businesses were primarily family or locally run.
A new type of merchandising experience with shopping centres began in the late 1950s, casting a dark shadow on the traditional ‘Main Street’ merchant.
The Newmarket Chamber of Commerce in May 1957 appealed to council to stop further shopping plazas, but the planning committees were unable to do anything to prevent them. Many believe they actually encouraged their spread by making their construction part of the deals with the developers.
Prior to 1950, Davis Drive was sparsely settled. The north side of Yonge Street was open farmland to the town limit and, on the south side, a parcel of land of about 10 acres belonged to Amelia Rogers and, later, the Millard family.
Ernest Crossland bought the estate in 1947 and, a short time later, the property became part of a huge subdivision, and the laneway became Parkside Drive.
The surrounding acreage became Newmarket’s first shopping plaza and, in 1953, construction was completed on eight stores, including IGA, a hardware store, a restaurant, and other convenience outlets.
The Newmarket Plaza was enlarged in 1957 to contain 47 stores and a permit was issued to Dominion Stores for a supermarket that was completed in 1959 and further extended in 1961.
I can remember the expansion of open malls/plazas along a north-south axis on Yonge, and east-west on Davis Drive and Eagle Street. Many new subdivisions had a new plaza built. I distinctly remember the building of what I called the Hy and Zel’s plaza as part of the new Glenway subdivision. Perhaps your community boasted a new shopping complex when you were shopping for your new home.
Major developments quickly followed along Davis with the building of Upper Canada Mall in 1973 with Simpsons-Sears and Zellers among the retail offerings, and Yorktown Plaza in 1980 with a Loblaws and Kmart among the stores.
For those who commuted to Toronto for work, the arrival of the Eaton Centre, opened in 1977 on the site of the original Eaton’s store, became an instant hit as a tourist attraction and ‘mega covered mall.’ Some of the other large, enclosed malls that drew us to Toronto to shop included Yorkdale, Square One Shopping Centre, and Scarborough Town Centre.
Newmarket’s Upper Canada Mall would fit into the closed mall concept. Situated on the northwest corner of the Davis and Yonge intersection, construction began in 1973 and it opened in 1974 with 55 stores, and featured a north-south arrangement with two sunken sitting areas surrounded by brick planters on the lower level.
An Eaton’s department store was added in the early 1990s, which later became a Hudson’s Bay. The Sears closed, and Winners currently occupies the upper level of the former Sears.
In 2008, the mall underwent a $60-million renovation that added another 148,000 square feet of space, including a 950-seat food court and 25 new fashion retailers.
On Sept. 7, 2018, the mall opened Market & Co., an area with restaurants and food stores, after renovating and converting the space previously occupied by Zellers.
Owned by one of the big three retail developers, Oxford Properties Group, it currently features 250 stores and covers more than 820,000 square feet.
Sources: The Memorable Merchants and Trades 1950-1980, by Eugene McCaffrey; shopping mall websites; Stories of Newmarket: An Old Ontario Town, by Robert Terence Carter; an oral history interview with George Luesby, 1997; Newmarket Era articles and photos; Upper Canada Mall website; past columns by Richard MacLeod on NewmarketToday; The Development of the Shopping Mall in Canada — HBC website; plans for Newmarket Plaza, courtesy of Ted Boyd.
Newmarket resident Richard MacLeod, the History Hound, has been a local historian for more than 40 years. He writes a weekly feature about our town’s history in partnership with NewmarketToday, conducts heritage lectures and walking tours of local interest, and leads local oral history interviews.
