Port Place Shopping Centre
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Port Place Shopping Centre is an indoor shopping mall located in downtown Nanaimo, British Columbia.
[edit] History
The roots of Port Place can be traced back to a two-store strip mall that was built in 1952 on the site of the former Nanaimo Sports Grounds in the downtown area, with Simpsons-Sears and Safeway as the original anchor tenants.
The strip mall's owners expanded the existing facility by attaching an indoor mall to the strip mall, opening the new complex as Harbour Park Shopping Centre in 1967. Safeway moved into a larger location in the newly-added mall portion, while Fields moved into the former Safeway space and Cunningham Drugs (which was bought out by Shoppers Drug Mart in 1970) joined the tenant list.
Harbour Park underwent expansion again in the early 1980s with the construction of more retail space. During the next few years afterward, Safeway and Shoppers Drug Mart closed their locations at the mall and Sears relocated to Rutherford Mall in north Nanaimo; Thrifty Foods took over as the supermarket anchor in 1988, London Drugs opened a location next to Thrifty Foods, and after a period of use as a bingo hall, the former Sears space was divided and renovated to accomodate Liquidation World, a fitness gym and several other retail spaces.
In 1996, however, Liquidation World and most of the other businesses in the old Sears location were forced to vacate their spaces to allow the Great Canadian Casino to move in; the only business in that location that did not move was Subway, which has a long-term lease signed with mall management.
Plans for renovation and refurbishment of Harbour Park by its owners was begun in 2000, most notably the demolition of several former retail spaces near Fields to make way for a planned new food court; after a lengthy delay in renovating that part of the mall, the renovations were finished and the food court opened in 2004, the same year the mall name was changed to the present Port Place upon completion of the mall renovation project.
In addition to Thrifty Foods, London Drugs, Fields and Great Canadian Casino, other major tenants at Port Place include Orange Julius, Canada Post, the Medical Arts Centre clinic and MDS Metro Labs, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, The Source by Circuit City (formerly the Canadian stores of Radio Shack), Purdy's Chocolates, BC Liquor Stores and Wendy's (built on the site of a former Simpsons-Sears auto service centre and gas station).
