Conestoga Mall (Waterloo, Ontario)

Conestoga Mall

Location	Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Address	550 King Street North
Opening date	1978 [1]
Developer	Ivanhoe Cambridge, Select Properties Limited
Management	Ivanhoe Cambridge
Owner	Ivanhoe Cambridge
No. of stores and services	111
No. of anchor tenants	3
Total retail floor area	660,972 sq ft (61,406.3 m2)
No. of floors	1
Website	www.conestogamall.com

Entrance on the west side of the mall

Conestoga Mall is a shopping mall located at 550 King Street North in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Located at King Street's interchange with the Conestoga Parkway, it is the largest shopping centre in Waterloo, and third-largest in Waterloo Region. The mall is owned and operated by the shopping centre development company Ivanhoe Cambridge, which is a principal real estate subsidiary of Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec.

Anchor tenants include Hudson's Bay, Target, Zehrs, Galaxy Cinemas, Winners, Sport Chek, and Old Navy. The mall, built in 1978, was one of the only buildings on this section of King Street. Since it opened, the mall has been expanded several times, and has contributed to the retail success of this area. Several big box retailers have opened on King Street North around the mall.

Redevelopment

Conestoga Mall underwent a major $75 million redevelopment project.^[2] The project began in mid-2006, and was completed in the spring of 2010. Details of the project include a 130,000-square-foot (12,000 m²) expansion on the south end of the property (recently completed), a renovation and upgrade to the existing building (under construction), a new 700-seat food court with a new south end mall entrance (under construction), and a pedestrian-friendly façade.

The redevelopment was also to include significant traffic improvements to the King Street entrance of the mall. The intersection of Conestogo Road and Kraus Drive were replaced with a roundabout at the City of Waterloo's request. A second entrance was added to King Street in the form of a right in-right out intersection. The traffic upgrades were paid for by Ivanhoe Cambridge as a condition of the City of Waterloo issuing a building permit for the expansion of the shopping centre.^[3]

The Bay

The Bay (now "Hudson's Bay") was moved slightly to the south and was completely rebuilt into a larger store. The new prototype Bay at Conestoga Mall was the first "green" store in the company's portfolio - complete with environmentally-conscious measures such as solar panels, wind turbines, recycled carpet, and waterless urinals. The company also introduced higher end products such as Chanel cosmetics to serve Waterloo's growing affluence.^[4] The space left vacated by the old Bay store is planned to be converted into new stores for the fall of 2009.

City of Waterloo Museum

Conestoga Mall donated 4,000 square feet (370 m²) in the new expansion to the City of Waterloo to establish a permanent museum for the city's heritage artifacts. Over 10,000 of the City's historical artifacts will be displayed in the City of Waterloo Museum. Waterloo's heritage collection has been mainly in storage over the past decade, with most of these artifacts coming from the closure of the Seagram Museum. The City of Waterloo Museum will be located between the new Bay store and food court entrance.^[5]

Environmental commitment

Conestoga Mall is recognized as one of the most environmentally conscious malls in Waterloo Region. Foremost, the mall supports green electricity,^[6] purchasing 30% of its common area electricity requirements from Bullfrog Power .

Loblaw Superstore controversy

Loblaw Companies, which operates the Zehrs chain of grocery stores, has owned a large parcel of land to the southwest of Conestoga Mall. Despite much controversy with local citizens and the City of Waterloo, Loblaw planned to close the Conestoga Mall Zehrs and replace it with a much larger approximately 175,000 square foot Real Canadian Superstore.^[7] The decision was to have been appealed to the Ontario Municipal Board, as the City of Waterloo was reluctant to approve the application for various reasons, the main being the land having to be rezoned to major commercial from industrial.

In September 2008, Loblaw sold its land holding to Intelligent Mechatronics Systems, a high tech company for $14.5 million.^[8][9] As of May 2009, this tech firm had completed renovations to the existing building on the site, and relocated its operations to this property. IMS plans to employ as many as 160 people within the coming years. Meanwhile, the Conestoga Mall Zehrs remains open.

Anchor stores

Current anchors

• Hudson's Bay (130,580 sq ft.)
• Target (120,084 sq ft.) - (previously Zellers) - closing 2015
• Zehrs (72,864 sq ft.)

Sub-anchors

• Galaxy Cinemas (40,123 sq ft. satellite building)
• Winners (26,116 sq ft.)
• Sport Chek (20,911 sq ft.)
• Old Navy (19,011 sq ft.)
• H&M (15,252 sq ft.)

Former anchors

• Robinsons - Opened in 1978. Robinsons went bankrupt in the early 1990s and Hudson's Bay opened in its place.
• K-Mart - Opened in 1978. K-Mart discontinued its operations in Canada and was then taken over by Zellers - now a Target store which opened in late fall 2013.
• Dominion - Opened in 1978. The Dominion location was converted to a Zehrs in the 1980s, and Zehrs later relocated to a new and larger location in the mall. In the previous grocery store space, Winners, Sport Chek, and other retailers opened in 1999.

Transit terminal

The terminal is located beside the King Street main mall entrance, by the Old Navy store. This facility operates as a major hub for Grand River Transit (GRT), with all of the routes that it serves terminating here. The Region's Ion rapid transit system will terminate here as well.

GRT bus service

• iXpress (200) to Ainslie St. Transit Terminal
• iXpress (201) to Forest Glen Plaza at Block Line Road and Strasburg Road
• iXpress (202) to The Boardwalk at Ira Needles Blvd.
• Route 6 Bridge
• Route 7 Mainline to Downtown/Fairview Park Mall
• Route 9 Lakeshore
• Route 12 Fairview Park Mall
• Route 14 Bathurst (Waterloo industrial area)
• Route 21 Elmira, to the towns of St. Jacobs and Elmira
• Route 31 Columbia
• Route 32 Kumpf

References

External links

• Conestoga Mall Official Website
• Ivanhoe Cambridge Official Website
• Ivanhoe Cambridge Leasing Property Portfolio

Coordinates: 43°29′53.37″N 80°31′37.22″W / 43.4981583°N 80.5270056°W / 43.4981583; -80.5270056