Sunday, September 22, 2013

Grant Park Shopping Mall 3

Target Opening Soon
This coming week Grant Park Shopping Centre starts to re-surface their parking lot outside the Target. Things are getting close for the opening of the store.

Meanwhile, inside the mall, the roof has been blown off for sunlit portals to bring in some natural light in.

One of the New Portals
The Modern Taco Company expands beyond Academy Road and opens beside McNally Robinson soon. Access is from outside the mall.

It has been years of construction but in the end, Grant Park Shopping Centre has been transformed.

It has always been a bit of a hodge podge despite expansions and modernizations over the years.

There seems to more of a flow from one end of the mall to the other after this major initative.

Despite this major completion, the mall still has question marks regarding two anchors. Will the Safeway close, be re-branded or sold? Will Empire Theatres modernize, be closed or turned to a discount movie house?

The Target which opens soon will be southwest Winnipeg's first and the store will under severe scrutiny comparing it to the U.S. experience. One suspects that Target Canada's executives know they won't be able to underperform for very long. Somehow, Target needs to find the same success that Costco and Walmart have found in Canada.

1 comment:

Purple Rod said...

I will always have fond memories of the Grant Park Mall. I worked in the mall from 1995-97, at Bata/Athletes World(which closed down in 1999), across from the McNally Robinson.

On a typical work day, I would wait at McNally Robinson, browsing the novels, waiting for my shift to begin. At lunch, I would hit the food court (which became the LC around 1998) usually to order some Japanese Food from Soya Japan. Finally, I would then proceed to Applebees with coworkers, once a week, to celebrate the end of the day.

Good times.