By Tracy Hanes
Malls are Providing Convenient Housing Options; If You Know Where to Buy
The mall used to be the place you went to shop for clothes, buy CDs or concert tickets, hang out with friends in the food court, or see a movie. Thanks to the rise of online shopping and streaming, many of those activities have fallen by the wayside.
But a new trend is emerging: the mall as a mixed-use community where people live, access medical services, play sports, enjoy culinary experiences, picnic in parks, catch transit, as well as shop in cool environments.
The number of plans to transform GTA malls into mixed-use residential communities is eye-opening, with new announcements almost weekly. Just a sampling includes Toronto’s Cloverdale Mall, Galleria Shopping Centre, Jane Finch Mall and Sherway Gardens, Scarborough Town Centre, Shoppers World in Brampton, the Pickering City Centre and Markham’s Markville Mall.
“These redevelopments are not going to solve the housing supply challenge on their own. They will bring tens of thousands—maybe low hundreds of thousands—of units,” says Richard Joy, executive director of ULI (Urban Land Institute) Toronto. It’s a far cry from the 1.5 million homes Ontario needs, but it’s a good start.
“It’s definitely a way to unlock underutilized sites and capitalize on a lot of potential not used before, mainly around surface parking lots,” says Sami Kazemi of BDP Quadrangle.
Identifying them as “really exciting and important frontiers,” Joy notes that malls have qualities that make them attractive for redevelopment. Many are close to transit—or could be, as they will have the density to support transit.
Kazemi says these shopping centres were created to be islands surrounded by seas of parking, but that’s no longer sustainable and doesn’t create an inviting urban environment. Consumer behaviour has changed, and while Covid closures and online shopping shifted consumer habits, Kazemi maintains there’s still demand for experiential retail destinations that people want to come to.
Kazemi says government investment in infrastructure, particularly transit around sites such as the Scarborough Town Centre, Eglinton Square, Jane and Finch Mall, etc., has been one of the drivers for such redevelopments.
He notes that malls were initially designed to act as meeting places, to which many have strong emotional attachments. “When we have public consultations and are designing a mall redevelopment, we have to be mindful that it was designed as a social hub,” Kazemi says. “If we are creating a new mixed-use development, you have to have the social infrastructure and build on that. That’s a big challenge, but a goal we have to keep in mind.”
Gail Shillingford, director of urban development for B+H Architects, says some malls are doing fine without adding housing, but are land-consumptive, and with transit in place or coming in the future, parking lots are valuable development land.
She says the redevelopments can provide opportunities to draw people to a mall. “Is it a new school? A new community hub? A food marketplace such as Eataly? You want a combination of places to sit, eat and shop, places to socialize.” Those types of magnets will also help draw retailers to additional phases.
Those anchors used to be department stores like Sears or The Bay, Joy says, but community hubs or services are increasingly becoming the magnets for malls.
Shillingford agrees that the existing community’s needs must be balanced with those of the future condo community. “There can be a bit of a disconnect,” she says, “and it can lead to the concept of gentrification, where the existing community has to go elsewhere.”
Shillingford cites the ’1960s-era Jane Finch Mall as one with a strong connection to its community. With the arrival of the LRT Finch West Line 6, its 17-acre site is pegged to become a high-density, mixed-use development by Brad-Jay Investments. Shillingford notes that many of the mall’s businesses are culturally specific, serving a primarily black community with modest incomes.
The plan is to preserve the mall as a community anchor. The goals include affordable housing options, not-for-profit childcare, community-stewarded spaces, affordable commercial space for local businesses, opportunities for artists, local job creation and education.
Finding the Right Mix
Shillingford says that in all mall redevelopments there should also be access to essentials, such as a grocery store and drugstore. Fine-grain retail can be at ground level, with gyms, elementary schools, daycares, etc. on the upper floor.
“It does not just have to be residential, retail or office,” she says. “It can be a mix of uses that adapt within the community. It can be a use that the city may not be able to provide. The developer can pitch in and include something that fills a gap.”
Rafael Lazer, CEO at Almadev, says due to “every empty lot or parking lot being spoken for,” developers have had to look at underdeveloped sites across the GTA, and malls are one solution. He says the goal is not to eliminate them but to transform them into something better.
“How do you take malls built in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s or ’80s with gigantic parking lots and transform them into something more in tune with current demand?” he asks. “By adding thousands of housing units! That’s where the live/work/play story comes to life.”
Almadev demolished the old Galleria Shopping Centre at Dupont and Dufferin to create Galleria on the Park, a master-planned community that will feature about 2,900 residential units in eight architecturally distinct high-rise towers. There will be approximately 300,000 square feet of retail space and 20,000 square feet of office space. The first two condo buildings in the first phase are occupied, along with tenants in 150 affordable units.
“We look for sites that may be one step behind the pack, and we like to build neighbourhoods with multiple phases,” Lazer says of under-the-radar communities. “We require a volume that’s hard to get in the downtown core, and the location of the Galleria mall was perfect. It’s close to the downtown core but far enough to allow for a gigantic piece of land (20 acres). It feels like downtown but less expensive.”
The mall was next to an underutilized park and a rundown community centre. Almadev reached out to the city and did a land exchange. “The park was hidden and not inviting, so we said, ‘Let’s make it into a stellar park. Let’s move the community centre and more than double its size.’ It was truly a joint effort and a very unique opportunity.”
Galleria on the Park will not be a “closed world,” says Lazer, but an attraction for the local area and beyond. “It’s not about eliminating retail but changing it and allowing it to transform. Maybe it’s less about clothing stores and things you can order online, and more about services such as grocery stores, banks, a fitness centre, coffee shops, a kids’ playground—things that can’t be duplicated online.” Lazer feels combining residential with retail and amenities in a “cool place,” along with an eight-acre park and state-of-the-art community centre, will be a recipe for Galleria’s success.
More Building, Less Demolishing
Dunpar Homes has owned the 500,000-square-foot Sheridan Centre mall in Mississauga since 2018, a year after which they lost a major office tenant. While the rest of the mall was almost fully occupied and provided positive cash flow, the pandemic caused “a lot of people to re-examine what they were doing,” says Dunpar’s V.P. of Finance Harpreet Bassi. The mall, now called Sherwood Village, sits on 30 acres and is transitioning to a mixed-use development, with the mall at the centre and a mix of high-rise, mid-rise and low-rise (townhouses) surrounding it.
“If you live there, you will be able to walk to everything you need on a daily basis,” says Bassi. “This is a community mall, not a regional mall. We are only demolishing 100,000 square feet of the former office space. The mall will never be demolished. We are building around it.”
The mall already has a Metro grocery store, a Shoppers Drug Mart and Scotiabank. One of the goals is to offer new top-tier retail and new dining experiences. Il Fornello, a casual fine-dining pizza restaurant and patio, opened last year and has been very popular.
With four other large malls in the area, Bassi says Dunpar considered what it could do to differentiate Sherwood Village from the competition. Because Dunpar has deep expertise in home renovations and building, it decided to create a home renovation/design destination similar to Toronto’s Castlefield Design District.
“For someone who lives in Mississauga or Oakville, it’s a bit of a drive to Castlefield, and there’s nowhere to eat. If you’re going to renovate your home, you’ll be able to walk into this mall, go to the kitchen place, go the tile store, the flooring store—it will be one-stop shopping,” says Bassi. “We will have a designer co-worker space where designers can work with the clients to make decisions. It is close to the highway and has great parking.”
The former office space had good ceiling heights and can accommodate activity centres in Phase 2, such as a golf simulator business, a badminton club that relocated from Burlington, and a “first-class” 13-court pickleball facility slated to open in September, owned and managed by Dunpar. Pickleball players will have to walk through the mall to access the court, thus passing by the home improvement and design stores.
“We are really ramping up and getting calls daily, and we still have some retail space available in Phase 3,” he says.
Dunpar is “cautiously optimistic” that approvals for the first two residential buildings are imminent, which would allow for a spring groundbreaking of mid-rise buildings of eight to 10 storeys.
“Transit is coming, but it’s not there yet,” Bassi notes. “This location will have shuttle service to Clarkson GO, and Mississauga is building a big bus hub, but we have to be cognizant of the need for parking.”
3-D Design
Kazemi says his team takes a ‘3-D’ approach to mall redevelopments: density, diversity and design. “Density is not a bad way to make all that retail viable. Diversity carries a lot of meaning, but in architectural design, it’s the diversity of design and built form and the public realm.” On the shopping front, it means a mix of large-format stores and small retail.
One project Quadrangle is working on is the Scarborough Town Centre. It’s on an 80-acre site that will take decades to develop, with the first phase coming soon. Kazemi stresses the importance of designing to future-proof the development.
Oxford Properties Group owns Scarborough Town Centre and plans to bring more than 15,000 new residential units to the site.
“On a project like this, you are creating new blocks, bringing in housing, establishing a sense of character in different districts,” he says. “It sets the framework, but over time that may change. For example, we’ve seen a shift happen quickly in the amount of parking needed 10 years ago and the need today. We don’t want to oversupply parking, as it’s a waste of resources and a drag on the environment. How can we future-proof above-grade parking that can be converted to something else?”
Kazemi says office space also needs to be considered for the long-term, as although demand isn’t where it was just a few years ago, that doesn’t mean it won’t again in the future.
If a mall is not doing well, Kazemi’s team looks at the entire slate as blank. They’ll do infill development around the parking lot, create a network of streets and blocks, and allocate for public parkland contributions.
“It’s a mandate from the city, and greenspace is something our clients know is needed for a community to thrive,” he says. “We look at how it relates to the mall: Is it adjacent to housing? Is it acting as a buffer? It’s not one size fits all. You want that park to not just be a neighbourhood park but also be complementary to the shopping centre. People could buy food in the mall and then have a picnic in the park.”
Joy, meanwhile, fears that many mall developments will be under-amenitized in terms of community infrastructure and go all-in for density. “If they don’t put in amenities such as parks, trails and great transit, there is the potential to get this wrong.”
Joy points to the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre, which high density and elements such as transit (subway, bus and major highways), office towers, restaurants and big box stores, yet the environment feels sterile. “A great community must have a lot of complexity built in that goes beyond the retail and residential. Some of the mall redevelopments in the GTA are more thoughtful in that respect than in the past. There’s room for excitement, but also room for caution.”
What’s not in debate is that mall developments will be highly densified with high-rises, says Joy, although some may have mid-rises and townhouses in the mix. The questions are more about where the money will come from to build them and when.
According to a July report from Urbanation and CIBC Economics, the Toronto condo market is deteriorating to levels not seen since the 1990s and is in recessionary territory. Joy says it could be a long wait before many of these projects get built. But as the owners of many malls are well-capitalized and backed by things like pension funds, he says they are “very likely in a position to flip the switch faster than others” when market conditions improve.
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