Port Place Shopping Centre
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| Location | Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada |
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| Opening date | 1952 (original strip mall) 1967 (indoor mall, as Harbour Park) |
| Management | First Capital (Port Place) Corp. |
| Owner | First Capital (Port Place) Corp. |
| No. of stores and services | 6 |
| No. of anchor tenants | 3 |
| Parking | 800 |
| No. of floors | 1 |
| Website | Port Place Shopping Centre |
Port Place Shopping Centre is a hybrid indoor/outdoor shopping mall located in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada.
[edit] History
Port Place began as a two-store strip mall that was built in 1952 on the site of the former Nanaimo Sports Grounds in the downtown area, with Simpsons-Sears and Safeway as the original anchor tenants.
The existing facility was expanded in 1967 by attaching an indoor mall (the second one in Nanaimo, after Northbrook Mall, which opened in 1966), which was then named Harbour Park Mall. Safeway moved into a larger location in the newly added mall portion, while Fields opened in the former Safeway space and Cunningham Drugs (which was bought out by Shoppers Drug Mart in 1970) joined the tenant list.
Harbour Park underwent expansion again in the early 1980s with the construction of more retail space. In the following years, Safeway and Shoppers Drug Mart closed their locations at the mall and Sears was relocated to Rutherford Mall in north Nanaimo. Thrifty Foods took over as the supermarket anchor in 1988, London Drugs opened a location next to Thrifty Foods, and after a period of use as a bingo hall, the former Sears space was divided and renovated to accommodate Liquidation World, a fitness gym, and several other retail spaces.
In 1996, Liquidation World and most of the other businesses in the old Sears location were forced to vacate their spaces to allow the Great Canadian Casino to move in. The only business in that location that was not forced to move was Subway, which has a long-term lease.
Plans for renovation and refurbishment of Harbour Park by its owners were begun in 2000, most notably the demolition of several former retail spaces near Fields to make way for a food court. After a lengthy delay in renovating that part of the mall, the renovations were finished and the food court opened in 2004. That same year, the mall name was changed to the present Port Place upon completion of the mall renovation project.
In addition to Thrifty Foods, London Drugs, Fields and Great Canadian Casino, other major tenants at Port Place included Orange Julius, Canada Post, the Medical Arts Centre clinic and LifeLabs Medical Laboratory Services (formerly MDS Metro Labs), the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, The Source by Circuit City (formerly Radio Shack), Purdy's Chocolates, BC Liquor Stores and Wendy's (built on the site of a former Simpsons-Sears auto service centre and gas station).
In a 2009 announcement, Port Place owner First Capital Corp. revealed plans to redevelop much of the present Port Place site. In those plans, London Drugs and Thrifty Foods will remain at their present locations, while the BC Liquor Store and the Medical Arts clinic moved to new locations across from the two anchor stores and the remaining stores closed or moved elsewhere in Nanaimo.[1] Beginning in early 2010, much of the former indoor part of the mall between the London Drugs/Thrifty Foods block and the Great Canadian Casino (whose Port Place location has since been renamed Casino Nanaimo), including the food court and the original Safeway/Fields space, was demolished to make way for redevelopment of the complex, including a strip mall and freestanding retail space, low-rise office and residential space and a 26-storey condominium tower as part of the redevelopment, which has been estimated will take up to ten years to complete.[2]
[edit] References
- ^ Merchants bail out as Port Place mall gets ready to renovate at the Nanaimo Daily News
- ^ Commercial developers take advantage of market with several projects around the city at the Nanaimo Daily News
[edit] External links
