Alberni Mall
Encyclopedia
Alberni Mall was an indoor shopping mall
located in Port Alberni, British Columbia
. Beginning in the fall of 2007, it will be reformatted as an outdoor shopping centre following renovation and redevelopment of the former mall complex, and will most likely also be renamed as part of its updating.
-based company which had recently opened the Ironwood Mall in Campbell River, British Columbia
, were approached by a group of Port Alberni citizens about building an indoor mall in their city. At the time, Port Alberni was one of the few larger towns in British Columbia that did not have an indoor mall. The proposition received support from then-Port Alberni mayor Jim Robertson, the city's council, the Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District
and major retailers. A twin movie theatre and two banks were included as part of the proposed mall's original plans, but those plans were dropped prior to the beginning of the construction phase.
The mall's site, a then-wooded area located on the southeast corner of Johnston and Cherry Creek Roads, was cleared in the summer of 1978 and construction began in August that year. The mall was completed and opened its doors for the first time as the Alberni Mall on May 30, 1979 with 42 stores and services. Safeway
and Kmart
were the mall's original anchor tenants, while other major retailers in the beginning included Fields
, Boots Drug Store, Peoples Jewellers and Orange Julius
. In later years, Boots (which closed its Canadian stores in the 1980s) was replaced at the mall by People's Drug Mart, and eventually by Pharmasave
, while Sears Canada
had a dealer store located in the mall in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Alberni Mall prospered through the 1980s and into the mid-1990s, but hard times began to befall the mall beginning in 1996, when Safeway closed its location at the mall on November 14, even though they retained their lease; rather than let a competing supermarket
chain take over their former space, Safeway opted to sub-lease it to Liquidation World
. In 1998, the Canadian stores of Kmart were purchased by the Hudson's Bay Company
, with the intent of turning most of them into Zellers
stores and closing the rest. One of the stores HBC chose to close was the Alberni Mall Kmart, which was subsequently demolished to make way for a new Canadian Tire
store, which opened on November 1 that year.
The mall eventually went into further decline with the construction across Johnston Road of a new power centre called the Pacific Rim Shopping Centre
, which opened in early-2005 with Wal-Mart
and Extra Foods
as its anchors, followed by the closure of the Liquidation World store in May 2006 (several months after Safeway's lease on the location expired), which led to a further exodus of retailers. From a high of about 45 stores and services in the 1980s, Alberni Mall approached dead mall
status near the end of its function as an indoor mall as its tenant list dropped to just four businesses by the time of its closure—Canadian Tire, The Source, Mark's Work Wearhouse
, and Solda's Restaurant, with all other businesses either relocating to the new Pacific Rim Centre or elsewhere in Port Alberni, or closing their doors altogether in some cases.
In August 2006, the mall began undergoing complete redevelopment to turn it into a power centre similar to the neighboring Pacific Rim Centre. As part of the overhaul, the site of the old Boots/Pharmasave and Peoples Jewellers locations in the mall's east end was the first part of the old mall to be torn down, to make way for a new location of Mark's Work Wearhouse beside Canadian Tire; the front portion of the remainder of the mall between the new Mark's Work Wearhouse and the former Safeway/Liquidation World was levelled for a parking lot while the back portion will renovated for new retail space; and the existing Safeway space at the mall's west end will be renovated and divided into smaller retail spaces.
On April 15, 2007, the main part of the mall closed to allow demolition and renovations to resume as Mark's Work Wearhouse relocated to its new store (which opened four days earlier, on April 11), while The Source by Circuit City closed temporarily to prepare for relocation to its new Pacific Rim Centre location (which opened in early-July) and Solda's also temporarily closed while its owners prepared a new location for the restaurant. The first two new tenants for the mall as part of its revitalization arrived in late-2007 when the dollar store
chain Dollar Giant
opened for business in November, followed by Boston Pizza
on December 28. Redevelopment of the old mall was expected to continue into 2008, but further renovations were subsequently put on hold due to pending interest from other prospective new tenants and the recent economic downturn.
On July 2, 2010, the Boston Pizza location at Alberni Mall was forced to close by mall owner Shape Properties as the result of the previous franchise owner falling behind on rent payments, which added up to a backlog of $106,000 at the time of closure. The Alberni Mall Boston Pizza franchise has since been acquired by new owners, who plan to reopen the restaurant on April 30, 2011. Shape Properties also announced that it plans to subdivide the remaining part of the old mall into smaller parcels for sale to interested clients, including the possibility of a new multiplex movie theatre (which had been part of the mall's original plans in a previous form).
Shopping mall
A shopping mall, shopping centre, shopping arcade, shopping precinct or simply mall is one or more buildings forming a complex of shops representing merchandisers, with interconnecting walkways enabling visitors to easily walk from unit to unit, along with a parking area — a modern, indoor version...
located in Port Alberni, British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
. Beginning in the fall of 2007, it will be reformatted as an outdoor shopping centre following renovation and redevelopment of the former mall complex, and will most likely also be renamed as part of its updating.
History
In 1977, Royal Oak Holdings, a VancouverVancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
-based company which had recently opened the Ironwood Mall in Campbell River, British Columbia
Campbell River, British Columbia
Campbell River is a coastal city in British Columbia on the east coast of Vancouver Island at the south end of Discovery Passage, which lies along the important coastal Inside Passage shipping route...
, were approached by a group of Port Alberni citizens about building an indoor mall in their city. At the time, Port Alberni was one of the few larger towns in British Columbia that did not have an indoor mall. The proposition received support from then-Port Alberni mayor Jim Robertson, the city's council, the Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District
Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District, British Columbia
The Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District of British Columbia is located on west central Vancouver Island. Adjacent regional districts it shares borders with are the Strathcona and Comox Valley Regional Districts to the north, and the Nanaimo and Cowichan Valley Regional Districts to the east...
and major retailers. A twin movie theatre and two banks were included as part of the proposed mall's original plans, but those plans were dropped prior to the beginning of the construction phase.
The mall's site, a then-wooded area located on the southeast corner of Johnston and Cherry Creek Roads, was cleared in the summer of 1978 and construction began in August that year. The mall was completed and opened its doors for the first time as the Alberni Mall on May 30, 1979 with 42 stores and services. Safeway
Safeway Inc.
Safeway Inc. , a Fortune 500 company, is North America's second largest supermarket chain after The Kroger Co., with, as of December 2010, 1,694 stores located throughout the western and central United States and western Canada. It also operates some stores in the Mid-Atlantic region of the Eastern...
and Kmart
Kmart
Kmart, sometimes styled as "K-Mart," is a chain of discount department stores. The chain acquired Sears in 2005, forming a new corporation under the name Sears Holdings Corporation. The company was founded in 1962 and is the third largest discount store chain in the world, behind Wal-Mart and...
were the mall's original anchor tenants, while other major retailers in the beginning included Fields
Fields (department store)
Fields is a brand of Canadian discount stores owned by Hudson's Bay Company, with 165 locations in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Yukon, and Northwest Territories.- History :...
, Boots Drug Store, Peoples Jewellers and Orange Julius
Orange Julius
Orange Julius is a chain of fruit drink beverage stores. It has been in business since the late 1920s. The eponymous beverage is a mixture of orange juice, milk, sugar, ice and vanilla flavoring.- History :...
. In later years, Boots (which closed its Canadian stores in the 1980s) was replaced at the mall by People's Drug Mart, and eventually by Pharmasave
Pharmasave
Pharmasave is a Canadian independent pharmacy and drugstore retailer. It is a member owned and governed cooperative founded in 1981 when United Pharmacy and Western Drug Mart joined together. Each of Pharmasave’s more than 430 stores operates independently and they range in size from small...
, while Sears Canada
Sears Canada
Sears Canada Inc. is a retailer, headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, that operates in all provinces and territories across Canada with a network of 196 corporate stores, 195 dealer stores, 38 home improvement showrooms, 108 Sears Travel offices and a nationwide home maintenance, repair, and...
had a dealer store located in the mall in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Alberni Mall prospered through the 1980s and into the mid-1990s, but hard times began to befall the mall beginning in 1996, when Safeway closed its location at the mall on November 14, even though they retained their lease; rather than let a competing supermarket
Supermarket
A supermarket, a form of grocery store, is a self-service store offering a wide variety of food and household merchandise, organized into departments...
chain take over their former space, Safeway opted to sub-lease it to Liquidation World
Liquidation World
LW Stores, Inc. is a retailer that liquidates consumer merchandise through 94 outlets across Canada and three outlets in the United States. The retailer also provides store-closure sales management and solves asset recovery problems in a professional manner for the financial services industry,...
. In 1998, the Canadian stores of Kmart were purchased by the Hudson's Bay Company
Hudson's Bay Company
The Hudson's Bay Company , abbreviated HBC, or "The Bay" is the oldest commercial corporation in North America and one of the oldest in the world. A fur trading business for much of its existence, today Hudson's Bay Company owns and operates retail stores throughout Canada...
, with the intent of turning most of them into Zellers
Zellers
Zellers Inc. is Canada's second-largest chain of mass merchandise discount stores, with locations in communities across Canada. A subsidiary of the Hudson's Bay Company , it has 273 locations across the country....
stores and closing the rest. One of the stores HBC chose to close was the Alberni Mall Kmart, which was subsequently demolished to make way for a new Canadian Tire
Canadian Tire
Canadian Tire Corporation, Limited is one of Canada's 60 largest publicly traded companies. The firm operates an inter-related network of businesses engaged in retailing hardgoods, apparel and petroleum as well as financial and automotive services, employing more than 58,000 people across Canada...
store, which opened on November 1 that year.
The mall eventually went into further decline with the construction across Johnston Road of a new power centre called the Pacific Rim Shopping Centre
Pacific Rim Shopping Centre
Pacific Rim Shopping Centre is an outdoor shopping centre in Port Alberni, British Columbia, formatted as a power centre. It is located on the north side of town at the intersection of Cherry Creek Road and Johnson Road where the latter becomes known as the Alberni Highway.Wal-Mart Canada, Extra...
, which opened in early-2005 with Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. , branded as Walmart since 2008 and Wal-Mart before then, is an American public multinational corporation that runs chains of large discount department stores and warehouse stores. The company is the world's 18th largest public corporation, according to the Forbes Global 2000...
and Extra Foods
Extra Foods
Extra Foods is a Canadian supermarket chain, part of Loblaw Companies Limited. It operates 72 stores in Western Canada. Most Extra Foods stores are smaller than its sister chain, The Real Canadian Superstore, and most locations are in smaller, rural communities...
as its anchors, followed by the closure of the Liquidation World store in May 2006 (several months after Safeway's lease on the location expired), which led to a further exodus of retailers. From a high of about 45 stores and services in the 1980s, Alberni Mall approached dead mall
Dead mall
A dead mall or greyfield is a shopping mall with a high vacancy rate or a low consumer traffic level, or that is dated or deteriorating in some manner. Many malls in the United States are considered "dead" when they have no surviving anchor store or successor that could serve as an entry into or...
status near the end of its function as an indoor mall as its tenant list dropped to just four businesses by the time of its closure—Canadian Tire, The Source, Mark's Work Wearhouse
Mark's Work Wearhouse
Mark's Work Wearhouse, sometimes branded as Mark's, is a Canadian clothing retailer. First opened in Calgary, Alberta in 1977 by Mark Blumes, a former retail executive with the Hudson's Bay Company, it has been owned since 2001 by Canadian Tire...
, and Solda's Restaurant, with all other businesses either relocating to the new Pacific Rim Centre or elsewhere in Port Alberni, or closing their doors altogether in some cases.
In August 2006, the mall began undergoing complete redevelopment to turn it into a power centre similar to the neighboring Pacific Rim Centre. As part of the overhaul, the site of the old Boots/Pharmasave and Peoples Jewellers locations in the mall's east end was the first part of the old mall to be torn down, to make way for a new location of Mark's Work Wearhouse beside Canadian Tire; the front portion of the remainder of the mall between the new Mark's Work Wearhouse and the former Safeway/Liquidation World was levelled for a parking lot while the back portion will renovated for new retail space; and the existing Safeway space at the mall's west end will be renovated and divided into smaller retail spaces.
On April 15, 2007, the main part of the mall closed to allow demolition and renovations to resume as Mark's Work Wearhouse relocated to its new store (which opened four days earlier, on April 11), while The Source by Circuit City closed temporarily to prepare for relocation to its new Pacific Rim Centre location (which opened in early-July) and Solda's also temporarily closed while its owners prepared a new location for the restaurant. The first two new tenants for the mall as part of its revitalization arrived in late-2007 when the dollar store
Dollar store
A variety store or price-point retailer is a retail store that sells inexpensive items, often with a single price for all items in the store...
chain Dollar Giant
Dollar Giant
Dollar Giant is a chain of 85 dollar stores in the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario. The company was founded in 2001. It is headquartered in Vancouver, and is Canada's fourth largest operator of dollar stores...
opened for business in November, followed by Boston Pizza
Boston Pizza
Boston Pizza is a Canadian-based restaurant chain which owns and franchises locations in Canada, the United States and Mexico.-History:...
on December 28. Redevelopment of the old mall was expected to continue into 2008, but further renovations were subsequently put on hold due to pending interest from other prospective new tenants and the recent economic downturn.
On July 2, 2010, the Boston Pizza location at Alberni Mall was forced to close by mall owner Shape Properties as the result of the previous franchise owner falling behind on rent payments, which added up to a backlog of $106,000 at the time of closure. The Alberni Mall Boston Pizza franchise has since been acquired by new owners, who plan to reopen the restaurant on April 30, 2011. Shape Properties also announced that it plans to subdivide the remaining part of the old mall into smaller parcels for sale to interested clients, including the possibility of a new multiplex movie theatre (which had been part of the mall's original plans in a previous form).
External links
- Old Mall... major renos/tear down?... businesses moving at Alberni.ca forums
- New mall site at Alberni.ca forums
- Mall News at Port Alberni Kicks Ass Webboard
- Future Alberni Mall floor plans