Midtown Plaza (Saskatoon)

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Mall facts and statistics
Midtown Plaza
Midtown Plaza Main Entrance showing CN tower

Location	201 1st Avenue South - Central Business District, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
Opening date	1968 renovated 1990
Owner	Oxford Properties
No. of stores and services	132
No. of anchor tenants	2
Total retail floor area	616,282 square feet (57,254.5 m²) / 96,883 square feet (8,996.1 m²) retail
Parking	1,000 surface North, south and sears lot and 796 underground
No. of floors	2
Website	http://www.midtownplaza.ca/ -

Midtown Plaza is a shopping mall in downtown Saskatoon, owned by the Oxford Properties Group. [1] The two main anchors are Sears Canada and The Bay and the shopping centre has a total store count of approximately 130 stores. The mall was built on the former site of the city's main railway station as part of a major inner city redevelopment project in the 1960s that also saw construction of a freeway, the Sidney L. Buckwold Bridge, and a major arts/convention complex (once called the Centennial Auditorium, but now called TCU Place). Midtown Plaza opened in 1969 as a single-level mall with approximately 60 stores, and in the 1980s underwent a major expansion that added a second floor as well as a main floor food court, roughly doubling its tenants.

The ceremonies of July 30, 1970 celebrated the opening of Saskatoon's enclosed down town shopping mall Midtown Plaza (Saskatoon) located on the area formerly used by the CNR. Eaton's and Simpson's Sears being the first anchors for the Midtown Plaza, soon to be joined with the Dominion (a grocery store) and the a Famous Players movie theatre. When Dominion closed, the area was re-modelled into an indoor show room and food court. When Eaton's closed, the Hudson Bay Company moved from its 3 story location on Second Avenud and 23rd Street to be the second anchor. Sears Canada is the present company format for Simpson's Sears. The CN tower was Saskatoon's tallest building at the time of construction.

Also part of the Midtown Plaza complex is CN Towers, an office block that was for most of the 1970s the tallest building in Saskatoon. Besides professional offices, from the 1970s to the early 2000s it also housed the broadcast facilities for the city's Canadian Broadcasting Corporation affiliate, CBKST. In the late 1970s a one-ton piece of concrete fell off the side of the CN Towers, crashing into the mall below and killing one person; the mall and the office block were subsequently closed for several days while engineers assessed the building's integrity.

In the early 1980s a small boutique-style shopping centre called Midtown Village opened adjacent to the west side of the mall. The Midtown Village became part of the Midtown Plaza in 1989 and is currently entirely leased by Saskatchewan Property Management Corporation Community Services.

Another addition to the complex was the construction of a Toys "R" Us store; this store is not physically connected to the mall, being built on a former section of plaza parking lot and separated from the mall by 20th Street, but is still considered part of Midtown Plaza.