We need enough of them that you don't drive all the way to the Oxford owned mall across the city that has them.
Is it really a surprise that malls repeat retail offerings, mall after mall? The idea of any owner is to keep locals shopping at the most convenient location to them, and not to lose them to competition further away. If they can also lure people from further away with special offerings, great, but the #1 market is the one that's close at hand.
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I have no doubt that's true of neighbourhood malls, like The Promenade, etc. And while regional malls like the Eaton Centre and Sherway Gardens certainly have their local draw - their success is also tied their ability to draw from the whole region, not to mention tourists. And as the malls are increasingly indistinguishable, they undermine their ability to do so over the long-term.
Don't get me wrong - I have no expectation that these malls won't be full of chains (that's always been the case), and that there will duplication of tenants among large, regional malls. But as the owners strip away the unique characteristics of each mall, and focus on what seems like an ever-narrowing group of key tenants, one starts to wonder why anyone would ever bother driving to Sherway. When they do announce "unique" tenants, it's usually first-to-market banners that often have half-a-dozen additional locations in the area in a relatively short time frame -- in other words, differences have become time sensitive. Of course, the mall owners do it because it's successful. But as we have all seen over the last two decades, retail trends can change quickly and abruptly -- what was once on top can in a few years be struggling to survive. I worry about the long-term prospects of these centres (and the planning function they play in the areas where they are located) when owners like CF seem to be blindly following a strategy where its main centres are all seem to be rapidly losing a sense of place. Oxford seems to be doing a better job with Yorkdale, although that might simply be due to having gone so high end.
I don't know what the solution/alternative would be, but my guess is that it involves offering visitors something a little different and being creative in one's offerings. We'll see.
I'm guessing you are correct when you say "so you don't drive all the way to the Oxford-owned mall", as I can only assume that these firms are racing to sign what they imagine to be top-shelf tenants, because a competitor will.