Retail: Asian Malls (Landmark, Pacific, Splendid China, etc.)
Condominium shopping centres slated for north Scarborough
Steeles Avenue from Kennedy to Markham seen as tourist zone
Article from
www.insidetoronto.com
MIKE ADLER
Dec. 19, 2006
The condominium concept brought many people to Scarborough to live. Now it's going to revolutionize shopping here.
Built in the mid-1990s on the north side of Steeles Avenue in Markham, Pacific Mall, which still bills itself as the "largest indoor Asian mall in North America" brought in a novel idea: its 400 stores are individually owned.
But two new condominium malls, each hoping become a regional shopping destination bigger than Pacific Mall, are planned for the Scarborough side of Steeles.
Backers say their hundreds of stores, some as small as a closet-sized 90 square feet, offer condo-mall shoppers a level of comparison shopping the regular retail malls lack. Shops of a few hundred square feet are also a business opportunity, they add, for immigrant entrepreneurs without the funds to lease a larger store or those who have been shunned by retail malls as an unknown quantity.
"The pattern of shopping has changed totally," said Lawrence Wong, CFO and a partner in The Landmark, a condo mall on Steeles near Middlefield Road whose 700-store Phase 1 is approved and may be open by winter 2008.
Condo store owners "don't need a big profit margin, so the shoppers can enjoy a unique product at a lower price," Wong said in an interview last week.
Meanwhile, a former Canadian Tire just east of Kennedy Road and nearly across from Pacific Mall, has been converted to a 281-store condo mall, Splendid China, whose grand opening is scheduled for Feb. 17, Chinese New Year's Eve.
And though the city has concerns about its effect on local traffic - and is being forced to fight the mall developer at the Ontario Municipal Board - Splendid China plans a second phase of 700 stores on what is now its parking lot. That larger phase is already 95 per cent sold, said Paul Jone, owner of Visar Realty Inc. and broker for the project. The parking lot, he added, would be replaced by a four-storey garage.
Jone, who has worked six years on Splendid China, doesn't see the mall as competitor for Pacific Mall and its companion on the Markham side, Market Village.
"We will be complimentary and beneficial to each other," he said this week, predicting the busy stretch of Steeles from Kennedy to Markham Road will attract tourists and "keep the area booming."
The city, which has heard nearby Heathwood residents say Splendid China would invite shoppers to cut through their neighbourhood, has not finished a report city council needs to make a decision on Phase 2. It's been waiting for the developer to revise a traffic study, said Renrick Ashby, senior planner on the file.
"Lots of stuff needs to happen" before staff can recommend approval, he said.
Splendid China, however, has wasted no time in sending the stalled Phase 2 plan to the OMB, which could force a decision. A pre-hearing is set for February.
Jone, however, said Splendid China's plans for traffic control are "excellent" and include extending Redlea Avenue from Steeles to Passmore Avenue by January 2008 and opening Silver Star Boulevard to Passmore as well.
The Landmark, which like Splendid China will come with a food court and several restaurants, is also relying on Passmore to channel traffic. Its backers are also paying to extend State Crown Boulevard to Steeles as well as widen sections of Steeles and Markham Road, Wong said.
Now being prepared for construction on what was mainly vacant farmland on the edge of an industrial zone, The Landmark - "a shopper's paradise, an investor's precious gemstone" - had the support of local politicians before it received approvals this summer.
Then-Ward 41 Councillor Bas Balkissoon (Scarborough-Rouge River) said he heard about 18 months ago from The Landmark (Canada) Inc. president Charles Chan, not knowing Chan had been his neighbour for seven years. At a meeting over coffee, Chan asked Balkissoon, who is now Scarborough-Rouge River MPP, for advice "on how to get his mall built," Balkissoon recalled at a press conference this month.
He said he convinced Chan to have the condo mall auction a store to raise money for the Yee Hong Community Wellness Foundation and provide a second store free as an information booth for the Yee Hong Centres for Geriatric Care.
The mall "will finish off an area in Ward 41 that has sat vacant for years" and change the face of Scarborough, Balkissoon said.
Chin Lee, the current councillor who said he was also at the meeting with Chan, voiced his own approval. "The community itself benefits and we all come out winners," he said.
The Landmark will be "divided into colourful theme zones" for different items, which Wong said is an innovation from Asia that lets shoppers better compare products and price.
English will be mandatory on all mall signs, he added. "We want to make everyone come in, not just Chinese."
The Landmark, whose promotional video says its "vision is even more ambitious than the shopping paradise we have suggested" hasn't finished deciding what to build for a Phase 2, Wong said.
But he added the mall developer is part of a larger association called the Tapscott Landowners Group, which hopes to build on up to a million square feet of retail in the area, with The Landmark covering half a million.
The mall could also see satellite buildings housing large retailers that are popular with customers of all backgrounds, Wong suggested.
"Our dream is, Let the West meet the East."
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Is was just a few years ago this area was still farmland within the city borders. Traffic will be a mess once they finish building all those malls. The area around Pacific Mall is already a mess on weekends.
