Introduction
Champlain Mall, located on 3200 East 54th Avenue, is a regional mall opened in 1973 serving the South-East Sector of the City of Vancouver. Recently the Mall is under a redevelopment application by the developer to demolish part of the Mall and build apartments within the area. The situation of the Mall can be summarized in the following excerpt from the Development Permit Staff Committee Report for the Development Permit Board (February 22, 1999):
“At present, the Champlain Mall consists of 17,643m2 (189,915 sq. ft.) of building with commercial uses and a public library, located in the basement level. The CD-1 zoning for the site, containing no regulations other than uses, was approved in 1971. Council also approved the form of development at that time, specifying the mall development now in place. In January 1997, the developer, PCI, enquired about redevelopment of the site through a development application, noting that in addition to commercial, residential is a permitted use in the zoning. This initiative was instigated by the impending closure of the Zellers store and the fact that the mall had, since the opening of Metrotown and expansion of Oakridge Shopping Centres, under performed financially.” (Development Permit Staff Committee Report for February 22, 1999)
It is obvious from the above excerpt that Champlain Mall has been under performed financially due to the existence of other malls close by. Instead of demolishing the whole mall, the developer keeps part of the mall and applied for redevelopment of the area to allow the building of residential units. In this project, the objective is to look at the factors leading to this change. Besides the fact that Metrotown and Oakridge Shopping Centres are the main competitors to the mall, population characteristics changes of the residents around the mall are the main focus of this project.
On the other hand, since the mall is serving the neighbourhood
area, any redevelopment to the mall will affect the residents of the area.
Since I am living in this area, any changes to the mall affects me.
If the mall is going to be demolished, the residents of the area as well
as the mall's tenants will definitely be affected.
Facts about the Mall
The Mall has a gross leasable area of 16,908 m2 with 45 stores. Anchor stores include a Zellers department store and an Extra Foods grocery store. Other stores include a pharmacy, a liquor store, a bank, some fashion stores, and restaurants. The mall also includes a public library and medical/ dental offices located in the basement level. By looking at the composition of stores, the mall is actually providing a variety of services typical of what regional malls offer. However, with only 45 stores, the scale of the mall is actually quite small. Also, the composition of stores is mostly for daily needs.
The location of the mall is situated at the corner of Kerr Street and East 54th Avenue. It is the South-East Sector of City of Vancouver containing the Killarney community and the neighbourhood of Champlain Height. This area was the last large undeveloped parcel of land in the City when the Council approved the Overall Concept Plan for South-East Sector of City of Vancouver in May 1968. The development proposed was to include a mix of housing for families with or without children and single persons for all ages, and to provide a number of public housing units. Some of the lands were reserved for recreational, institutional, and commercial uses. (More detail of the Plan can be looked up from the references at the end of this project.) Therefore this gave rise to the development of this CD-1 zoning including large numbers of townhouses and apartments and a regional shopping centre. The mall was supposed to serve the Champlain Height area to the south and the single-family household of Killarney in the north and Fraserview to the west. Therefore the service area of the mall is bounded by Kingsway in the north, Boundary Road in the east, the Fraser River in the south, and Argyle street and Victoria Drive in the west. This service area is determined by the fact that the mall is a regional mall which serves the newly developed area of Champlain Height and the surrounding neighbourhoods in Vancouver.
Although the mall provides quite a number of services, due to its size and scale and with the emergence of much larger regional shopping centres such as Oakridge in Vancouver and Metrotown in Burnaby, the mall’s viability as a regional shopping centre has been diminished. These two competitors divert some of the customers of the mall. With increasing accessibility by public transit to these two malls, people have more choice in terms of types of services and range of stores. Especially since one of the main anchor store Zellers had terminated its lease with the mall in 1997, the existence of the mall becomes an issue. Therefore there are suggestions that a mixed-use of the mall area is better for the neighbourhood and that the commercial aspects of the mall should be neighbourhood oriented.
Should the mall continue to exist? From the above
discussions it is clear that the mall is facing competitors and that the
mall had under performed financially. Beside these factors, what
are the changes and characteristics of the demographic composition in the
neighbourhoods leading to this consequence? In the following sections,
demographic data will be looked at and spatial analysis will be performed
to explain this.