“It adds to the experience”

Once a month, Aryeh Bookbinder drives a school bus full of people around malls in and around the Greater Toronto Area. But the purpose of these tours is not the usual reason to go to the mall – to shop.

In contrast, tourists experience environmental artifacts at a different time: “Dead malls,” as Bookbinder calls them, malls with outdated or declining infrastructure, where there are more empty storefronts than occupied spaces by businesses. Some of the malls explored on past tours include Chinatown Center in downtown Toronto, Woodbine Center in Rexdale, and High Point Mall in Mississauga.

“There are areas that are alive, but surprisingly there are areas that are dead,” Bookbinder tells Yahoo Canada.

Bookbinder's tours are called “Liminal Assembly” and are inspired by his interest in anemia, the concept of nostalgia for something people haven't directly experienced.

“I wanted to do something that would absorb the anemia … but keep it offline,” he says.

Visiting these almost abandoned spaces can often evoke a sense of longing for another time, and it also suggests questions: how long can they be preserved and what can be expected of them in the future?

From the big mall to something else…eventually

During the post-pandemic recovery, changing shopping habits and the rise of e-commerce have led to the decline of major retailers. Just last year, Nordstrom closed all of its Canadian stores. Hudson's Bay has closed several stores across the country, including in Alberta, BC, Quebec and Ontario. Most of these shops occupied large spaces. One such indoor location in Toronto occupied five floors in a prime downtown location, not an easy and accessible space for any organization to adopt.

The discovery of these and other spaces is prompting developers to reimagine how they can be used. Lands in and around several shopping centers in Toronto are currently being redeveloped as mixed-use developments combining residential and commercial units with other amenities.

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But these projects take years, sometimes decades, to get off the ground. It requires planning, approval and consultation with the municipal government and may involve rezoning depending on the proposals.

Although plans to renovate Toronto's Yorkdale Mall have yet to break ground, they are already underway before the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the mall is far from dead, it is located in a large parking lot. The proposals include plans to rehabilitate the lots underground and pave the way for a neighborhood that could house 1,500 units over the next 20 years.

Meanwhile, Cumberland Terrace is a three-story storefront in the heart of Toronto, stuck in another era. Despite being located in the Ritzy Yorkville, considered prime real estate, the mall has been vacant for nearly a decade. The site is slated to be redeveloped, which would transform the mall into three high-rise buildings, although plans have yet to be approved.

A new lease on life at the mall

Shauna Brail is Associate Professor and Director of the Institute for Management and Innovation at the University of Toronto. He says the concept of adaptive reuse — creating a space for one purpose but using it for a different purpose — is gaining attention, especially in shopping malls.

“It creates opportunities for potential use of shopping malls that are now redundant space,” he says.

And these uses can be out of the box.

In 2022, Citi Plaza, a multi-use shopping plaza in London, Ont., granted permission to use a nearby vacant lot as a giant roller rink for several nights. The events drew 400 people who cruised the mall on skates or knives.

The Cineplex theaters across the street from Toronto's Eaton Centre, once popular with moviegoers, have since gone out of business. They are currently used as lecture halls by the nearby Toronto Metropolitan University during the day and for showing films at night.

Nostalgia adds to the shopping experience

Interest in these spaces seems to be growing because they offer a different feel than traditional malls, not to mention the rental deal.

Bookbinder says there's a renaissance for younger generations to visit abandoned spaces and set up shop because of the unique look and feel.

In downtown Toronto's Chinatown, a decades-vacant strip mall, Dog Park Shop, a high-end consignment store, is surrounded by vacant stores. That seems to be part of his appeal. On the store's Instagram page, they post pictures of people modeling clothes all over the deserted mall.

“Some entrepreneurs really want to set up shop in these spaces because they have the nostalgia, the innovation of a bygone era of architecture and aesthetics,” says Bookbinder. “It adds to the experience of shopping there.”

The next Liminal Assembly tour explores Toronto's PATH system, a long and largely abandoned stretch of downtown underground shopping. The event will be held on December 14.