It is no secret that I am fascinated by Ontario’s failed downtown malls. Over the last decade, I have visited most of these half-dead shopping centres, from Thunder Bay to Sarnia to Peterborough. All of these malls were built in smaller centres hoping to revitalize their urban cores, especially after the successes of the Toronto Eaton Centre and Ottawa’s Rideau Centre.
A majority of downtown shopping centres in Ontario counted Eaton’s as an anchor, starting with London’s Wellington Square in 1960. New malls in Sudbury (1970), Hamilton (Jackson Square, 1972-1975) and Kitchener (Market Square, 1974) followed, with the pace of downtown mall openings quickening in the late 1970s and 1980s as the provincial government provided assistance through the Ontario Downtown Redevelopment Program (ODRP).
A few downtown malls did not secure Eaton’s as the lead anchor. These malls, which were anchored by Sears, included King Centre (Downtown Kitchener’s second indoor mall), Cornwall Square, and Downtown Chatham Centre. I visited the latter mall in late September 2023.
Chatham, a small city located halfway between London and Windsor, has had bad luck ever since the 1950s. City growth was curtailed when neighbouring townships fought the city’s annexation efforts to develop new industrial lands on the urban outskirts. Political pressure from exurban residents kept the city rather isolated from the new Highway 401, which passes south of the old city limits; residents of the hamlet of Charing Cross opposed a highway interchange that would have provided direct access into Downtown Chatham. Meanwhile, a new Multi-Malls shopping development was approved for a site north of Chatham; an appeal to the Ontario Municipal Board by the city was dismissed, and the new Woolco and Loblaw-anchored plaza helped to draw customers — and tax revenues — from the city proper.
This unfortunate situation was only rectified in 2000, when the City of Chatham was amalgamated with not just its neighbouring townships, but the entire county, creating the new municipality of Chatham-Kent, coming far too late for the industrial and commercial development Chatham had hoped for. In the meantime, a new downtown mall that would not only retain shoppers but hopefully attract new visitors to the city, was seen as the solution.
While most downtown malls built during the ODRP era were led by Eaton’s and Cadillac Fairview, the Downtown Chatham Centre (DCC) was managed by Cambridge Shopping Centres. The city of Chatham conducted the land assembly (using its powers of expropriation where necessary), and cleared two city blocks, including the Garner Hotel, the old market square, the Romanesque Harrison Hall, and several commercial blocks, including a shuttered Eaton’s store.
Instead of Eaton’s — which closed its Chatham store in 1974 — the lead anchor would be Sears, which was expanding its Canadian footprint at the time, as it just pulled out from its 25-year partnership with Simpson’s. Unlike most downtown malls built in Ontario, DCC had always offered ample customer parking, located in a garage linked to both of the mall’s two shopping levels, as well as an adjacent surface lot, with mall visitors able to get their parking validated. On the south side of the mall, there was a Miracle Food Mart, along with a food court on the second floor. Downtown Chatham offered the only full-line department store in town; the mall also had the city’s only escalators. The plaza out front featured a fountain in the summer and a public skating rink in the winter.
For a time, DCC held its own. Sears was a much more suitable department store for a smaller industrial/agricultural city like Chatham than Eaton’s would have been. Though the Multi-Mall development north of the city on Highway 40 and the Thames-Lea plaza in the suburbs provided competition, the downtown mall’s regional market dominance was undisputed in the 1980s and most of the 1990s. Unlike Eaton’s, Sears Canada was particularly healthy until the early 2000s as it catered to the suburban middle class; in 1999, it purchased the remains of the bankrupt T. Eaton Company, converting many better performing Eaton’s stores to its own brand.
Unlike Chatham’s peer cities like Brantford and Sarnia, the mall’s tenant mix stayed relatively healthy well into the new millennium (see the 1992 and 2014 tenant lists below). Though Miracle Food Mart closed, that space was remised into a Sport Chek and a Goodlife Fitness gym. It wasn’t until the last decade that serious decline began to set in.
What happened?
There were several factors that led towards the decline of Downtown Chatham Centre, similar to the reasons why most downtown malls failed. The main difference is that the decline came later than most others.
Chatham’s economy, like most smaller Ontario centres, was in flux, particularly in the 1990s and early 2000s. Free trade agreements affected the local industrial economy, which was already weaker than neighbouring cities like Sarnia, Windsor, and London-St. Thomas.
Factory closures included the Navistar plant. For nearly a century, International Harvester was one of Chatham’s largest employers. The Chatham plant, which assembled International truck tractors and employed 2400 workers in 2001, closed for good in 2011. The rise of Walmart, which moved into the old Woolco store on Highway 40 along with other big-box retailers, also hurt the downtown mall. But Sears Canada entered its own death spiral in the mid-2000s. In 2005, the company was taken over by the private equity firm Pershing Square, whose CEO, Edward Lampert, was already slowly sucking the American parent company dry. Sears Canada sold off its credit card division, its Downtown Toronto headquarters, and eventually the leases for its most attractive stores in 2012 and 2013, including the former Eaton’s flagship in Toronto Eaton Centre.
By 2014, the DCC Sears was converted to an outlet store, foreshadowing its eventual closure in 2017, less than year before the entire chain disappeared from Canada.
In September 2023, there were only a handful of open stores left inside DCC, including Northern Reflections, a Dollarama, Fit4Less (a budget brand of Goodlife Fitness), Ardene, an independent jewellery store, and a Hart discount department store located in the old Miracle Food Mart/Sport Chek space. All open retail spaces were on the first floor; the escalators were completely blocked off. The Ardene store was already in the process of moving to the Thames-Lea plaza.
Security guards were stationed at both public entrances, likely to ensure the mall did not become a hangout for Chatham’s unhoused.
The mall also has a pharmacy and medical office, but since 2015, they are accessed only from the outside, in a storefront facing King Street.
What’s next?
The Municipality of Chatham-Kent currently occupies the Chatham Civic Centre, which was built in the late 1970s on the site of a former gas works on the Thames River. The Civic Centre requires major renovations or replacement, and the municipal government is considering purchasing part of the Downtown Chatham Centre, and moving the municipal government, the main library, and the art gallery/museum into the Sears store, which would be heavily renovated. Staff report that the cost of purchasing and renovating part of the DCC ($42,387,400) was similar to renovating the existing Civic Centre, library, and museum ($38.7 million to $45.8 million) and nearly half the cost of building brand new.
Earlier plans also included a new entertainment centre to host concerts and the Chatham Maroons minor hockey team, replacing an existing municipal arena constructed in 1949. Those plans were later dropped by the mall’s owners.
If Chatham-Kent agrees to purchase and renovate the vacant Sears store, they will relocate to nearly the same site as the old Harrison Hall.
The proposed relocation of the civic centre and library to a central location, adjacent to the RideCK transit terminal (which serves the old City of Chatham as well as many smaller population centres within the municipality) is certainly a more sustainable and equitable outcome than building a new civic centre outside the downtown core. It repurposes an existing building and helps to support downtown business. However, more housing, both on the surface lot and on any vacated civic properties would help bring even more people into the downtown core, which can use the boost. Though retailers may not flock back into the mall once renovations are complete, the storefronts offer flexible space for community programs and small business incubators.
For a small city like Chatham, this is likely the best outcome.
1992 Tenants
Below is the list of tenants at Downtown Chatham Centre in 1992, obtained from the 1993 Canadian Directory of Shopping Centres, published by Maclean-Hunter.
Anchors
Miracle Food Mart (32,925 sq. ft.), Sears (71,903 sq. ft.)
Fashions and footwear
Children’s wear: Just Kids
Unisex/family wear: Cotton Ginny, Le Château, Pantorama, Stitches, Work World
Ladies’ wear: Addition-Elle, Born Free, D’Allairds, Fairweather, Irene Hill, Just Petites, Lady Foot Locker, The Lady’s a Champ, Mariposa, Northern Reflections, Pennington’s, Personally Yours, Reitman’s, Ricki’s, Station Cotton, Suzy Shier, Thyme Maternity
Menswear: Tip Top
Footwear & leather goods: Foot Locker, Joggers, Kinney, The Shoe Place
Jewellery/accessories: Lady Jewellery Company, Ostranders, Young’s Jewellers
Other retailers
Books: Classic Bookshop, Coles
Drugs/health & beauty: Pharma Plus, The Soap Emporium
Department/mass merchandiser: A Buck or Two
Electronics: Radio Shack
Gift: Den For Men, Things Engraved
Hardware/paint & paper: Tool Den
Housewares: Junor’s, Stokes
Music/Records: Sam the Record Man
Pet: Pet Paradise
Photo/Camera: Black’s, Japan Camera 1 Hour Photo.
Restaurant/fast food: A&W, Crumbles Muffins, Frankfurters, Lumberjack Restaurant, Manchu Wok, Mulligan’s Roadhouse, Sorrento
Specialty Food & Drink: Bright’s Wines, Laura Secord, The Gourmet Cup
Stationery/Card: Carlton Cards, Hallmark, Willson Stationers
Toy: Toys & Wheels
Variety/Convenience: News Room
Dry Cleaners: La Moderna Dry Cleaning.
Hairstyling/Esthetics: The Golden Razor
Theatre/Entertainment: Fun & Games
Miscellaneous: Infoplace
2014 Tenants
The 2015 Canadian Directory of Shopping Centres tenant list was shorter, though still much more robust than former Eaton’s-anchored downtown malls in comparably-sized cities like Sarnia, Brantford, or Peterborough at the time.
Anchors
Goodlife Fitness (15,126 sq. ft.), Sears (71,903 sq. ft.)
Fashions and footwear
Unisex/family wear: Bluenotes, Le Château, T’s & Sweats
Ladies’ wear: Cleo, Fairweather, Impression, La Senza, Northern Reflections, Platinum Boutique, Suzy Shier
Menswear: Collins Formal Wear
Jewellery/accessories: Ardene, Charm Diamond Centres, Peoples Jewellers
Footwear & leather goods: Bentley, Payless Shoe Source
Other retailers
Books: Coles
Gift: Things Engraved
Housewares: Avenel Collections
Restaurant/fast food: A&W, I Luv Juicy, Subway, Wokhouse
Specialty food: Laura Secord
Stationery/Card: Hallmark
Wireless/telecommunications: Bell, Fido, Koodo Mobile, Rogers, Virgin Mobile
Variety/Convenience: Dollarama
Hairstyling/Esthetics: Classic Nails
Miscellaneous: CNIB Lottery Centre
Sean Marshall 