in the last 15 years has fundamentally changed the way people shop, said Alex Avery, chief executive of Primaris, which operates two dozen malls and about a dozen plazas across Canada.Article content
Government-mandated store closures during the pandemic helped accelerate digital adoption for both retailers and malls. And while it might sound counterintuitive, it was “a blessing in disguise,” Avery said. The new e-commerce reality helped push Primaris in November 2021 to launch To that point, malls have set out to reinvent themselves to be more than just a central hub where shoppers can cross off all the items on their to-buy lists, he said.
Primaris has also tried offering experiences to drive traffic by hosting Halloween haunted houses on its property. The move may be showing signs of success. In its most recent quarterly filings, Primaris said tenants have come back, with occupancy across all its shopping centres rising to 91.1 per cent, though that’s still below pre-pandemic levels.
“We’re seeing a shift. In fact, I went to Saks Fifth Avenue at Sherway Gardens with my wife one morning during the week; they didn’t open until noon. The sign said that they were open seven days a week between 12 p.m. to 6 p.m., or by appointment,” Minakakis said. “I thought to myself, ‘what is happening here?’ Is that a part of being unable to recover staff? There’s a lot of question marks.
Those decisions are already playing out in the mall landscape. Over the past few years, the prospect of developing residential buildings on underutilized shopping-centre land has become more of a reality. Top-tier mall owner Oxford Properties has already begun the planning process for high-rise residences outside the Greater Toronto Area’s Yorkdale Mall and Scarborough Town Centre.