I'm sure Yorkdale does so much more business than Yorkville. It's much more accessible to suburban wealth. And it's not a neighbourhood - it's a mall. Yorkville is the swankiest neighbourhood in Toronto.
The problems that zang has with the area are exactly why I have a soft spot for Yorkville. Like any, yes - swanky - neighbourhood, it has social strivers. But it also has a lot of leftovers from its time as much more downscale neighbourhood: Sushi Inn, Flo's, the Pilot, Hemingway's - sitting side by side with the Four Seasons, Alobar, Louis Vuitton, Hermes. It's a real neighbourhood with all the imperfections of a real neighbourhood.
Is Yorkville at its peak? No - it's not where it was ten, fifteen years ago. But folks, if you want to get run over by three Escalades in a row while scurrying across the road with an overpriced cappuccino and your latest Aesop purchase, Yorkville is the place to do it.
'Suburban wealth' has nothing on Rosedale, Forest Hill, Briddle Path, South Hill, Younge & Eglinton, etc aka urban wealth. Hell, even Yorkville itself, not just anyone can afford to live there.
I used to go to Yorkville almost every weekend in post-covid times in warmer (better) days. I've seen so many nouveaux riches in this neighbourhood I lost count. And yes, I did occasionally walk into Gucci, Louis Vuitton, YSL stores and Holt Renfrew and they were brimming with people on the weekends, it was literally hard to get any service. I'm not even talking about hardships of getting into one of those fancy restaurants like Enigma or Aburi Hana without reserving a table in the month prior. I mean, there are 3 Michelin stared restraunts in Yorkville, the rest of them are trying to keep up and they're getting much more foot traffic than any mall. It's an upscale neighborhood and 90% of its visitors are rich people (or people pretending to be rich). To sum up - it's a vibrant neighborhood, a real downtown neighborhood that's currently growing at a very fast pace, apart from luxury condos and hotels being built, there are also more luxury shops comming up - Van Cleef and Arpels, Rolex, etc. There's also Hermes and other less popular ultra-luxury brands, stuff that you can't get in Yorkdale. Loyalty programs, special treatment for frequent customers, closed VIP events, etc. It's not just some boring mall, there's a reason why every Canadian
flagship luxury store is in Yorkville and not Yorkdale (biggest Dior store on the continent, Channel, two story Louis Vuitton, Hermes), it's not just the service, even the inventory is oftentimes better than their counterparts in Yordkale. Saks Fifth Avenue + Eaton Centre is just down the road as well. In any case, these stores have a very good reason to exist and sales is the main one - it's just business, they would've just closed them if they underperformed (and definitely none of them would've rushed to open up more of in the area)
Yorkdale visitors, on the other hand, are not old money/nouveaux riches, but rather middle class/lower middle class people for the most part, from my expirience. Good performance (fourth best in North Amercia?) comes out of the volume and the fact that it can almost be considered outside of 'Toronto proper', serving different type of crowd, suburban, GTA, outside of GTA, pandering to them and adopting more americanized style of shopping which is almost entirely confined within the wall of the mall.
There are not a lot of European-style luxury shopping districts in North America left, we should cherish the fact that one of them exists and flourishes here in Toronto. There are many Yorkdales in the States and Canada, all around, but not a lot of Yorkvilles so to speak.
