In 1975 Unicity Fashion Square opened at the end of the city. St. James was still building homes at this time and there were few enclosed malls in the city such as Garden City, Polo Park and Grant Park. Success seemed very likely. With Woolco and The Bay, they had some solid anchors. On opening, they drew good crowds and thereafter but always had a stubborn wing of the mall that had stores come and go.
Within five years Unicity faced competition from all corners of the city as several malls opened up such as St. Vital Centre, Kildonan and Eaton Place and Winnipeg Square among others.
In 1994 Woolco was taken over by Walmart but this did not help Unicity as the mall was nearly half empty by this point. At the risk of losing Walmart altogether, Unicity Fashion Square was bulldozed in favour of a Smart Centre of big boxes anchored by Walmart.
Of the original stores in Unicity, the only ones from 1975 remaining at the location are Shopper's Drug Mart, Reitman's and McDonald's.
The lineup up those first stores is listed above.
Pictures from the Winnipeg Tribune Archives 1975, University of Manitoba.
The old anchors for Unicity were Woolco, The Bay and Dominion. The new anchors are Walmart, Canadian Tire, Sobey's and a solid lineup of Winners, Mark's, Dollar Tree, Valu Village, Staples, Sport Chek and others.
Unicity isn't a particularly attractive. The rules on greening their lot were fairly weak in 2000. As far as successful goes, it is generally fully leased compared to old Unicity Fashion Square.
I have been in a few Dollar Trees but find Dollarama to be better.
Winnipeg has a lot of thrift stores but Valu Village are fairly big.
Most of Unicity is wide parking lots and very little landscape.
I expect at some point Unicity, like a lot of malls, will be approach the city for zoning for housing. They should be forced to green up their property when that happens.
The retail landscape is changing everywhere and big parking spots like this are spots for future mixed development.
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