Parkway Mall; Saint John, New Brunswick

Abandoned Luncheonette at Parkway Mall in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada

This is going to be post number 112,495 where I apologize for the quality of the pictures taken with my old camera phone! Sorry! Eventually you’ll get tired of hearing me apologize for this (I know I’ve gotten tired of doing it), but you’ll forgive me when you see gems like these. Even when kicking it VGA-res style like it was still the grunge era, you can tell that the Parkway Mall in Saint John, New Brunswick is a gem. And guess what? It’s kind of in the middle of nowhere. So I probably won’t be back. This is what we get then.

Another thing about this mall: I don’t know anything about it and the good ol’ interweb won’t bail me out this time. I can say this: Saint John is a city of about 70,000, making it the largest in the province of New Brunswick. It’s very much a northern coastal city; it’s a sprawling blue collar city filled with oil tanks and paper mills and shipping ports, and it’s quite unlike most comparable New England cities. Saint John is also notable because–like many Canadian cities–it seems to have about one mall per every 10,000 residents. I saw five of these, but I may have missed two more! Don’t worry, I’ll post some fuzzy pics of those others someday. Eventually.

Parkway Mall is a relatively small center located at the intersection of McAllister Dr. and Westmorland Rd. on Saint John’s east side. It’s located directly across from McAllister Place, the city’s largest shopping mall and the reason I was in the area in the first place. Parkway Mall didn’t come up on my radar beforehand, and came as a very pleasant surprise. Despite being in the middle of the city’s most active retail district, these pictures illustrate that, as of when they were taken in June of 2005, the center had very little left operating inside. If I remember correctly, there was a shoe store and a dollar store, and “The Bargain! Shop,” which only had an exterior entrance.

As you can see, this one is a true dead mall gem. That sad little luncheonette in the center of the main mallway is my favorite; I can only imagine that when it was built, it was probably a really cool place. Those purple and blue stripes look like something I would’ve had on some cheap sneakers about 20 years back, too. The Parkway Mall is simply amazing, and worth a stop if you’re ever in the area (which is admittedly pretty unlikely). If you know any of the history of the mysterious Parkway Mall, please comment!

Parkway Mall in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada Bargain Shop at Parkway Mall in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada Food court at Parkway Mall in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada

Parkway Mall in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada Abandoned Luncheonette at Parkway Mall in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada Play It Again Sports at Parkway Mall in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada

Brookside Mall; Fredericton, New Brunswick

Brookside Mall parking area in Fredricton, NB

I figured that we might as well take a detour to a somewhat exotic locale for this strange little mall. In keeping with Canada’s typically crazy mall-building tendencies, the Brookside Mall is one of five (!!) malls serving the greater Fredericton, New Brunswick area. Fredericton is a tidy, attractive little city in central New Brunswick and is the capital of the province. To say this area is remote is a bit of an understatement: Fredericton has only about 50,000 people, and there are almost no suburbs. When you leave Fredericton, you leave–the surrounding areas have almost no population at all. We were really fascinated to find that they actually watch Boston television stations up there–this is a seven hour drive north of Boston!

I saw the Brookside Mall on a road trip up to New Brunswick just about a year ago. This is the lone mall for the northern side of Fredricton, and seems to be emblematic of many smaller Canadian malls: it includes a Zellers, a Sobey’s Supermarket, and a dollar store (in this case, it is the somewhat puzzling “Rossy Fredericton,” which reminded me a bit of Woolworth or Family Dollar).

Rossy Fredricton inside Brookside Mall in Fredricton, NB

While not dead, it’s easy to tell from the many vacant storefronts that the Brookside Mall wasn’t really thriving either. It seemed more typical of the kind of malaise that many smaller Canadian malls seem to endure, but quite unlike in the States, the tenants didn’t clear out wholesale. A mall like this one wouldn’t probably even be enclosed in the United States.

Brookside Mall also had kind of an interesting design. From the entrance on Brookside Drive (visible in the above photo) it appeared to be a standard older dumbell-style mall, with Sobey’s and Rossy Fredericton at each end. When using the main entrance, however, you find that there’s a larger hallway that goes straight back, then turns diagonally to the left, and ends at Zellers in the rear of the mall, making the center quite a bit larger than it seems initially. Furthermore, the style of the center (which is more or less laid out like a “V”) lead me to believe that a large empty space in the middle of the V was probably an anchor store of some sort, with entrances by both Rossy Fredericton and Zellers. Turns out I was half right–according to the diagram below, there is an entire wing spanning between Zellers and Rossy Fredericton that was closed off when I was there last year. What a neat floorplan for a smaller mall!

Brookside Mall floorplan, Fredericton, NB

Befitting of its physical remoteness there’s almost nothing about the Brookside Mall on the web, so if you do know something then (as usual) please comment! I did find this leasing page, and a general article about big box development planned for Fredericton and elsewhere in New Brunswick. There’s no satellite imagery of that area, either, though if you feel like you might want to visit the Brookside Mall, here it is. You can zoom out and get a really terrible satellite photo, too, but why would you want to?

Brookside Mall entrance in Fredricton, NB Brookside Mall Sobey's in Fredricton, NB Brookside Mall in Fredricton, NB

Brookside Mall in Fredricton, NB Zellers wing at Brookside Mall in Fredricton, NB Center court at Brookside Mall in Fredricton, NB

White Woods Mall; Amherstburg, Ontario

Bridge to Canada

It’s no secret that things are a little different in Canada. Not surprisingly, so is their retail scene. There are no JCPenneys, Targets, or Kohls; however, they hold their own with chains like Zellers, Hudson’s Bay Company, and Winners. Also, there seem to be a lot more enclosed malls in Canada. What would, in the United States, be a strip mall with outside entrances manifests itself in Canada as an enclosed mall anchored by a discount retailer such as Zellers or Winners, and a grocery store like A&P. These little Canadian malls have always intrigued me because they thrive, whereas the trend for smaller enclosed shopping centers in the United States is bleak. We in the U.S. have been shuttering our enclosed neighborhood centers in favor of open-air strip malls for well over a decade now. Why is this happening? Do people want immediate access to their favorite store without having to walk through a mall? Regardless, it may just be a bit too cold in Canada for them to give up their traditions and open up the mall.Ontario Welcome Center, Windsor
One of these small Canadian malls is the White Woods Mall in Amherstburg, Ontario. Located just a few miles south of Windsor, Amherstburg has a population of 20,000. Windsor, with a metropolitan population of 300,000, is an important border crossing with Detroit, Michigan. Interestingly enough, it is the only place where people go north to cross from Canada into the U.S. Also, Windsor and its environs are closer to downtown Detroit than most of Detroit’s own suburbs. So Although the Windsor area is not officially enumerated as part of Metro Detroit by either the Canadian or American governments, for practical purposes it is. All of these considerations are important when determining where people shop. Clearly many Canadians cross into the Detroit area to take advantage of the dozens of malls and chain stores there and while they have to pay the bridge and tunnel toll, they are exempt from tax in doing so. Nevertheless, there are four enclosed shopping malls on the Canadian side and White Woods Mall is one of them.

Built as the Fort Malden Mall, they changed the name within recent years to White Woods Mall. We mall connoisseurs know that when a mall’s name changes, it often gets renovated. In this case, that did not happen. I visited the small White Woods Mall (aka sMall) in January, 2004, and it had many dated and closed storefronts. It was anchored by A&P Supermarket on the north end and Saan, a Canadian discount chain, on the south end. In the mall, which had a square racetrack layout, were as of 1/04: Royal Bank, PharmaPlus Drug Mart, Bank of Montreal, the Amherstburg Walk-In Clinic, Reitmans, Lee J Nails, Pet Valu, Radio Shack, H&R Block, A Buck Or Two!, For 1 Optical, and the Tender Tootsies Shoe Warehouse. Since I visited this struggling mall in 2004, changes have been afoot. It is rumored that Wal-Mart is looking to make an entrance into Amherstburg, and would like to tear down at least half the mall to build a store. A story published in the Amherstburg Echo in February, 2006 indicates redevelopment of the site is imminent.

white-woods-mall-01.jpg white-woods-mall-02.jpg white-woods-mall-03.jpg
white-woods-mall-04.jpg
white-woods-mall-05.jpg white-woods-mall-08.jpg

white-woods-mall-07.jpg white-woods-mall-09.jpg white-woods-mall-10.jpg

white-woods-mall-06.jpg