Market Square Shopping Centre (Kitchener)
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| Coordinates | 43°26′57.1″N 80°29′12.3″W / 43.449194°N 80.486750°W |
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| Address | 25 Frederick Street Kitchener, Ontario N2H 6M8 |
| Opening date | 1973 |
| No. of stores and services | ~6 (16 retail spaces mostly vacant or repurposed) |
| No. of anchor tenants | 1 |
| Total retail floor area | Over 22,421.3 m2 (241,341 sq ft) - mixed retail, office space |
| No. of floors | 2 (4 with non-retail areas) |
| Website | europro |
Market Square Shopping Centre is a mall located in the downtown core of Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, whose tenancy skews to services.
History
[edit]Built between 1971 and 1973 on the grounds of the original Kitchener City Hall in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. It was home to an Eaton's (opened in 1973 and later became a Sears Canada retail store[1]), and home to the Kitchener Farmer's Market from 1973 to 2004. Eaton's closed on June 30, 1997, one of the company's first locations to shut down following its restructuring announcement.[2]
A glass clock tower at the corner of King and Frederick Streets pays homage to the former city hall clock tower, which is now located at Victoria Park, Kitchener.
Decline
[edit]The mall has since declined, through the 1990s (with a half empty food court[3] with long time McDonald's leaving in 2015) as shoppers have fled to larger malls in Regional Municipality of Waterloo like Conestoga Mall in Waterloo or Fairview Park Mall or Cambridge Centre to the south.
In January 2020, Conestoga College opened an 7,600-square-metre (82,000 sq ft) campus in the building, occupying about 1⁄3 of the centre's space.[4] The other major tenants were triOS College and The Record, the latter of which occupied a former Sears Outlet store. Few retail stores remain in the mall, which is now primarily used as office space. Nordia Inc. operated a call centre on the uppermost floor of the former Eaton's until 2019. triOS and the Record departed in the following years.
The mall has a multi-level indoor parking along Duke Street and a walkway across to Oxlea Tower (22 Frederick Street), a large office tower across Frederick Street.
The mall is now owned by Europro Real Estate, which owns a number of buildings in the city's core.[5]
Tenants
[edit]- Mr Wu's
- Service Canada
- Conestoga College, campus for International Business, effective 2020
Transit connections
[edit]Grand River Transit has a number of routes that have stops around the complex:
Bus Routes
- Route 1 Queen–River via stop on Frederick Street
- Route 3 Ottawa South via stop on Frederick Street
- Route 4 Glasgow via stop on Frederick Street
- Route 7 King via stops on King Street
- Route 204 iXpress Highland–Victoria via stops on Frederick Street
Light Rail
- ION light rail 301 at Frederick station
References
[edit]- ^ Kopytek, Bruce Allen (2014-10-21). Eaton's: The Trans-Canada Store. ISBN 9781625846952.
- ^ "Eaton's eases up on closures". Times Colonist. Victoria, British Columbia. 31 July 1997. p. E2.
- ^ "The Heart of Our Cities: Ontario's Downtown Malls and Their Transformations | Urbanspace Gallery". Archived from the original on 2017-04-29. Retrieved 2017-04-27.
- ^ Banger, Chase (2019-05-31). "Market Square will be home to new Conestoga College campus". CTV News. Retrieved 2020-03-06.
- ^ Davis, Brent (January 28, 2017). "Blockbuster! Toronto firm buys much of downtown Kitchener. Now what?". TheRecord.com.