Kingston Centre
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Kingston Centre (originally Kingston Shopping Centre) was an indoor mall built in Kingston, Ontario in 1955 and demolished in 2004. The Kingston Centre name now belongs to a 223,327 sq ft. campus-style open-air shopping centre on the same site, which replaced the now-demolished indoor mall.
Anchored by the Loblaws supermarket, the current Kingston Centre is (like its predecessor) located beside a Canadian Tire store and bordered by Sir John A. Macdonald Blvd, Bath Road and Princess Street.
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[edit] Anchors & Majors
[edit] History
The Kingston Shopping Centre was built in 1955 and anchored by Simpsons-Sears (later Sears Canada). It was located at 1100 Princess Street and served as one of two main transfer points for all Kingston Transit routes and the starting point for the city's annual Santa Claus parade. Originally an outdoor mall, it was the first locally to convert to an enclosed indoor mall and once boasted 78 stores including a two-storey Sears department store and a Loblaws supermarket.
As Kingston's first indoor shopping mall, the Kingston Shopping Centre retained the title of largest shopping centre in its local community until the rival Cataraqui Town Centre was constructed in 1982 in the former Kingston Township. Its closest rival at the time, the Frontenac Mall, had 57 stores in its heyday, anchored by Woolco.
Kingston Shopping Centre's retail traffic, once brisk, sharply declined after the relocation of Sears store to the rival Cataraqui mall in 1999. The Loblaws supermarket, newly-expanded into a modern building constructed on the grounds of the former Sears location, became sole anchor. This move, added to the long-time disappearance of smaller department stores such as Biway Stores, Family Fair, Marks and Spencer, S.S. Kresge and Woolworth, left Kingston Shopping Centre without a department store anchor. With one end of the mall a grocery store, the opposite end of the mall (which originally held Loblaws and a food court) was left as a continuously-empty ghostbox and eventually boarded up; it was the first section to be razed during the demolition of the remaining indoor mall building in 2004.
Fewer than a dozen retail tenants remained at the time of demolition: a barber shop, a health-food store, two banks, a grocery store, a drugstore, a camera store and a restaurant. These businesses were moved to new buildings constructed in what had been the parking lot of the original indoor mall and remain in operation.
The former department store site is currently occupied by a newly-constructed Loblaws grocery store building, with the rest of the greyfield re-used for new retail construction or left vacant. No part of the original mall structure remains. A large portion of land at the south-western section of the property, vacated by demolition of the original mall, is as of yet undeveloped.
Some residents have complained that the site is “not as pedestrian-friendly as they (the developers) guaranteed it was going to be.”[1]
[edit] Kingston Transit
Kingston Centre Transit Terminal,[2] located in the heart of the shopping centre, is a major transfer point for Kingston Transit; being the terminus for daytime routes 3, 10, 12, 71 and C with routes 1, 2 and 4 passing through. On evenings and Sundays routes 1, 2, C, E12 and E71 provide service.
