Comments on: Garden City Shopping Centre; Winnipeg, Manitoba

By: smack

smack — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:21:40 +0000

If you want malls, then Edmonton is the place. Edmonton guys..Edmonton….

By: smack

smack — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:19:49 +0000

@Tyguy,
I suggest you come to Edmonton.

By: Dizzy

Dizzy — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 21:33:23 +0000

I’m surprized that Cityplace isn’t included here; it’s about 50-75% empty…and the only point of redemption there is that the food court is pretty busy all the time.

The security guards are seriously harsh (they complain when use an electrical outlet for whatever reason). If I broke out the camera to take pictures, they’d probably beat me up.

By: Darren

Darren — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 05:27:36 +0000

I used to live in the North End of Winnipeg back in the 70’s when Garden City Shopping Center was at it’s hayday. I remember they had a Dominion Grocery store located inside the mall. It had one of the conveyor belts that the clerks used to put your groceries onto and then you would drive your car to the front of the store and have one of the associates put your groceries into your car. There used to be a Cole’s Bookstore, the Ye Ole Hobby Shop close to Laura Secord. This was before the food court. Eatons was labelled as Eatons Fashion Center. The Beaver Lumber store was the home hardware store. There used to be a restaurant located in the Sears store at one time. The Famous Players Cinema, before they cut it into two screens always played Disney Movies. I remember seeing the Witch Mountain movies there along with several other Disney films. Man, I miss the good old days lol.

By: Heather

Heather — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 04:26:11 +0000

I’m from Winnipeg, and i guess we’re quite special. Altho i live in the south end of the city and theres not really any enclosed malls near by. Well theres on but inside theres a safeway, a zellars, a hair place, and a dollar store. not very exciting. to get to a decent mall from here, you have to go to st vital centre. but apart from that, the only nearby enclosed mall is polo park. the main reason i use the enclosed malls is becasue in the summer its too hot to go outside for too long, and in the winter, you can get frickin frostbite in 2-5 minutes, never mind wandering around a stripmall for an hour. So i think that if u want malls, come to winnipeg. but they’re really not that exciting. edmonton may have less malls, but they have the west edmonton mall. minneapolis has the mall of america. and the malls in the states always seem to have better store. hollister, abercrombie. but we do have an american apparel. too bad its in osbourne villagem, and not in a nearby enclosed mall. oh well, come visit us in winnipeg soon =)

By: buzz

buzz — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 07:49:42 +0000

Alot has changed since you have been to Winnipeg. Garden City has been renovated and rebranded. Charleswood mall was turned into a bad strip mall. St. Vital is always growing beacuse of many new suburbs in the area, but still seems to market a little lower-end (even in traditionally more expensive stores like The Gap, there are ALWAYS sales). Polo Park was COMPLETELY gutted, with a ~50 million dollar, 20 000 sq foot expansion. There are many new stores on the parking lot, which is good that it takes wasted space, but it sucks that they dont keep expanding the mall. The old arena site which is right beside the mall has been vacant for a few years and winnipegers were hoping for a massive expansion to put it on par with mall of america and west edmonton, but now a local company notorious for putting repetitive, ugly, wasteful powercenters everywhere wants to make it an outdoor mall and seperate it from the mall (TERRIBLE IDEA). In a few years the stadium site besid that will be empty and there is huge potential for something spectacular, but the city fails again. Polo park is beautiful now with some great new stores and restaurants. When you were here i think 2 of the major anchors wre Sears and Eatons. When eatons closed sears temporarily moved in their to renovate, tehn moved back. Eatons is now The Bay. The Sport Chek moved to the new South side of the mall and Mcnally Robinson took its place with a major addition to the front. Safeway closed yesterday and they plan on subdividing it into many stores which is great beacause that wing of the mall is dead, not even starbucks brings people there. Over 80% of the stores were renovated last/this year and it really looks great. There is a new Moxies, and joeys and the famous earls Polo is renovating next year. Grant Park Mall is trying to reinvent but it is going nowhere, they just keep adding bad, ugly stores that last for 2 weeks and the change from cineplex odeon to empire thatres did nothing. More ppl in that mall are seniors that fight for tables at Tim Hortons tehn ppl actually shopping. The biggest new “mall” in the city is Kenaston @ MCGillvary. IT is made of 3 massive power centres (Linden Ridge, Kenaston Smart Center and the new Kenaston Common) and a Cinema City that each occupy a coner of a MAJOR intersection. IT has grown at an unbelievable rate (fastest in Canada) and is anchored by Home Outfitters, HomeSense, Safeway, Sobeys, Candian Tire, Home Depot and now also Costco and Rona. They are also building The Brick.
Two major issues right now are Portage Place and cityplace (across from eachother on portage ave, downtown). cityplace has no frontage or entrances on portage (the biggest street downtown), over 50% is vacant, all the stores are other offices or servies like UPS Store. It pretty much serves as a giant skywalk right now. the only cafe in it closed. Portage place is HUGE. 3 stories, staples, IMAX, movie theatre, theatre center. many empty stores, bad, small food court, mmost of its stores along portage are inside access only now, and many ppl are afraid to go there because of all the homeless. Its two big stores McNally Robinson and Holt Renfrew have both closed. A “new” area is emerging downtown with great restaraunts and great local and chain businesses and stores. The Exchange District. Its all early 1900s warehouses converted to stores/ofices/lofts/apts and is boredered by the now presigious WATERFRONT DRIVE with brand new condos and 1st floor retail all along it, facing the river. Its great.

Anyways i think thats enough info for now you should come visit soon!!!

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 01:09:48 +0000

Winnipeg has unfortunately lost several enclosed malls in recent years, including all 3 in the st james/charleswood area – all to be replaced by horrible strip malls – they’re fine for California, but not Winnipeg. Among the 7 or so major enclosed malls in Winnipeg, Garden city is one of the worst – it looks really tired and the stores/food court aren’t that great. Polo Park/St Vital Centre/Kildonan Place are the best and most popular malls in the city. Unfortunately, a few malls in Winnipeg have a problem with seniors roaming around in packs – some even wear tracksuits. I’m not sure why malls allow it since they don’t buy anything . Quite a few seniors even lobbied against the closing of Unicity Mall, strictly because they walked there, it was pathetic.

By: Connie

Connie — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 14:57:12 +0000

Having lived in Winnipeg all my life specifically in the Garden City area, I can say, Garden City is one of the smallest malls in Winnipeg. They like many other malls in Winnipeg open early so people can come in and walk the mall (for exercise) before the stores open. Given the winter temperatures here, that is a great feature.

Sears (Simpson Sears) seems to reinvent itself in this mall every few years. If goes from a higher end store to a clearance outlet and back again.

The mall is well maintained and the food court is a popular area for the seniors in the area to meet, have a coffee and chat. The food court offers a wide array of choices, Mexican, Japanese, fresh baked goods and of course A & W as well as other food vendors.

The mall must be doing fairly well since no sooner does one store leave and another opens up. The stores in this mall cater to the whole community from children and teens to adults and seniors. There are jewllers, athletic stores and of course Canadian Tire which provides products for cars, house wares, dishes, yard, camping, hunting and everything in between, including clothing and footwear.

Generally for a shopping day at the mall, most choose to go to Polo Park Mall.

By: itami

itami — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 18:59:03 +0000

well i am from Winnipeg Manitoba Canada and the mall has changed ALOT from 2001,

By: JP

JP — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:56:00 +0000

Stefany S:

Wal-Mart being connected to the mall is fairly common in Canada, not so much in the US. (Same with other discount stores – a majority of Zellers stores are still in malls, but it’s rarer to find, say, a K-Mart or Target in one south of the border.)

When Wal-Mart entered Canada by taking over Woolco in 1994, most of their stores were located in malls. They’ve moved many of them to standalone locations, but they’ve actually expanded some of their other mall stores like St. Vital.