Toronto Eaton Centre (Ongoing Renewal) | ?m | ?s | Cadillac Fairview | Zeidler

[MileHigh]

Article:
http://www.thestar.com/living/food/...s-48-million-food-court-makeover?bn=1#article

Photos of the designer seating:
http://photogallery.thestar.com/1043953

With respect to the real dishes and cutlery, someone commented they should not be handing out weapons to teenagers...

They spent $48 M just on the food court renos?! Does anyone else find this a tad bit high? In the end it's still the Eaton Centre... they're gonna get the same clientele and all the sparkly new furniture is going to get the same treatment as before.

 

[AlbertC]

http://www.blogto.com/restaurants/urban-eatery-toronto

Photos available on the blog webpage

Urban Eatery

Posted by Robyn Urback / REVIEWED ON AUGUST 25, 2011

The centre island hosts vegan Urban Herbivore, a Kensington Market staple, along with Big Smoke Burger (formerly Craft), offering its gourmet burgers in a *food court* instead of King Street. Also occupying the island is Liberty Noodle, an extension of one of my personal favourite Japanese restaurants in Liberty Village, and Crepe Delicious/Froshberg Gelato, which will be offering fresh, daily-made gelato (squeee!) and sweet and savoury crepes.

Among the other pleasantly surprising restaurants at Urban Eatery is Rare, Amaya, Fast Fresh, and Aroma Espresso, which juxtaposes with the unavoidable Subway chain, Jimmy the Greek, and New York fries. There are 24 restaurants in total, and space for 900 people to sit and dig in.

And speaking of seating, the uniform green and beige chairs are long gone, replaced with various options including Danish-designed red molded plastic chairs, wire chairs, and high-backed, which are pulled up to bars, long wooden tables, and white circular tables with brushed metal bases. Disposable packaging, for the most part, has all but been replaced, with plastic plates, cups, mugs, and bowls, as well as real cutlery that will take up the slack.

Urban Eatery by the numbers:

Size: 45,000+ sq ft
Seats: 900
Restaurants: 24
Tray collection stations: 5
Hand-washing stations: 2
Dishes in circulation: 100,000+
Glasses in circulation: 20,000+
Food waste reduction: up to 88%

 

[dt_toronto_geek]

I was in the EC a few weeks ago to buy great hand soaps on sale at the new Fruits & Passion location. I couldn't find boards anywhere that show layouts to where the stores are located, finally after about 40 minutes (39 minutes too long inside of there for me) I remembered my EC iPhone app. and found the store. I try to keep visits to the EC to two or three times a year, I'm not fond of shopping malls. The last time I was in there was probably in the winter when the railings and glass were about half done (south end), they seem mostly done now and I don't like them or the flooring. I didn't notice much else, I needed hand soaps, my head was already pounding and I wanted to get the hell out of there & back onto the street. Shopping malls give me headaches, I think it's the overload of signs, lighting and especially, smells. The EC seems to bother me much more than Yorkdale or Scarborough Town Centre, don't know why.

 

[DSC]

On Mall Directory Maps there is usually a number so you can see which merchant is where. Why do the Malls not put these numbers up on each store so that it would be clearer, for many, where the damned stores are? (Like dt_toronto_geek I do not like malls or go to them often.)

 

[PinkLucy]

I agree with you dt, I'm not a fan of the EC at all and avoid it whenever humanly possible. Haven't been to STC for decades. Not a fan of Yorkdale or Square One either for that matter, but I certainly prefer them over the EC.

 

[Kitsune]

They spent $48 M just on the food court renos?! Does anyone else find this a tad bit high? In the end it's still the Eaton Centre... their gonna get the same clientele and all the sparkly new furniture is going to get the same treatment as before.

they gutted out the entire lower floor... took out on all the stores under there and turned into one giant food court. 48m seems about right.

 

[adma]

They spent $48 M just on the food court renos?! Does anyone else find this a tad bit high? In the end it's still the Eaton Centre... they're gonna get the same clientele and all the sparkly new furniture is going to get the same treatment as before.

I think somewhere in this thread or some other Eaton Centre thread, I made the observation that in the post-department-store-supremacy era, food courts are the de facto true new "mall hubs". So maybe that't the operating logic behind $48m...

 

[ShonTron]

The reason it may be hard to see this is that there has been so much incremental hacking away at the building over the years. With each change the original esthetic gets a little weaker. But no single change seems like a big deal on its own. Ultimately though, you get to the point where we are now where, despite the fact that no actual demolition occured, it's essentially a different building that happens to occupy the same spot.

For me, it was the disappearance of the backlit yellow signage. Sure there were other changes (the loss of the provincial flags above Eaton's and the disappearance of the Timothy Eaton Statue, the Albert/James entrance redo, the mismatched extensions of the -1 and 1 floors where Eaton's vacated, the Yonge Street redo) but the signage was the thing that stood out for me as the loss of the classic Eaton Centre feel.

The Dundas Mall redo also killed the old aesthetic, that came just after the initial compromise of the yellow signs.

If there was one thing I'd change now, is I'd boot out Lush. The smell from that place is drifting further into Dundas Station, and it's headache-inducing, without exaggeration.

 

[Irishmonk]

Maybe for its next redo they'll restore it back to its original state.

 

[Northern Magus]

I think somewhere in this thread or some other Eaton Centre thread, I made the observation that in the post-department-store-supremacy era, food courts are the de facto true new "mall hubs". So maybe that't the operating logic behind $48m...

Spot-on, methinks.

Although I do find it somewhat disconcerting to think that the new mall rats are foodies.

 

[Kitsune]

Spot-on, methinks.

Although I do find it somewhat disconcerting to think that the new mall rats are foodies.

and lets not forget the 4 office tours that are directly connected to the eaton center ... its a lot more then just mall rats in the food court...

 

[Northern Magus]

They only buy lunches monday to friday, and the newest "tour" is more than a decade old. It's somewhat facile to suggest that the mall is reorienting itself simply to pander to their upscale lunches.

Adma's right: there's a fundamental paradigm shift going on as the notion of anchor tenant stores recedes.

 

[whatever]

Awhile ago I heard that there were plans being tossed around about an additional tower being added to the complex. The $48M food court might make more sense if considered against the potential for a new $500M tower. Apparently there were structural provisions in the original mall design to allow for it to go somewhere around the south-east corner of the mall (above the Sport Chek), so perhaps the thinking is that redoing the north food court will allow them to gut the south food court, creating some breathing room to stage the new tower construction

 

[Northern Magus]

Interesting, although the south food court would be completely unaffected by any construction or engineering work.

 

[adma]

Adma's right: there's a fundamental paradigm shift going on as the notion of anchor tenant stores recedes.

And keep in mind, too, that today's "major retailers" like H&M are far more narcissistically single-purpose than the Eatons and Simpsons of old--they lack their gathering-spot universality. By default, food courts have assumed that weight through the sum of their parts...