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Apr.*9, 2005. 01:00*AM
Yorkdale's $61 million facelift opens next week
Apple store won't open till May
Last major reno was in 1997
DAPHNE GORDON
LIFE WRITER
When Yorkdale Mall spends $61 million renovating and adding new stores, diehard shoppers get excited.
"I heard there's an Apple store coming," says Amy Cohen, 21, a student who visits Yorkdale about once a week.
"I have a Mac fetish, so I'll probably be spending a lot of time there. I went to the store in New York and it was so cool. I spent an entire afternoon there even though I didn't actually buy anything."
The mall with the chi-chi reputation and the highest sales per square foot of any enclosed mall in Canada has the clout to attract major new retailers to Canada. And even though Apple won't be open in time for Yorkdale's official unveiling at 9:30 Wednesday morning — it's set to open in mid-May — the computer and electronics store is the most exciting name on the list of stores set to debut there this spring.
Other new-to-Canada retailers setting up shop at Yorkdale include the Spanish women's fashion retailer Mango, which follows the H&M and Zara formula of up-to-the minute fashions at too-cheap-to-say-no prices; Geox, the Italian shoe brand known for its stylish and technologically advanced "no-sweat" shoes, and Billabong, the clothing label with a youthful, surfer vibe.
A new Sephora store, bigger than the only other Toronto location at Eaton Centre, and the first mall location for the rapidly expanding Canadian yoga wear brand Lululemon will also be meccas for uptown shoppers.
As for the rest of the stores, well, we've seen many of them before. Yorkdale's expansion will add increasingly common fashion retailers H&M, Zara, Tristan & America, Transit, Urban Behavior, United Colors of Benneton, Old Navy, Sunglass Hut and Tommy Hilfiger, among others, to the Yorkdale shopping experience.
Not that there's anything wrong with those stores, but it does appear that Toronto's three major malls now house many of the same retail tenants.
Altogether, there will be more than 40 new stores and 16,700 square metres of new retail space.
So will a trip to the new Yorkdale be romantic at all? What will set it apart from the iconic downtown outpost the Eaton Centre and the value-oriented suburban newcomer Vaughan Mills?
A hard-hat tour of the expansion last week revealed that Yorkdale, which was last renovated in 1997 to add a 10-screen theatre, aims to set itself apart from uppity competition by offering a shopping experience that's sort of like shopping on Bloor St., minus the weather.
"The idea was to create a contemporary, urban shopping experience," says architect Chris Brown, of the Canadian architecture firm MMC International. He gazes up at the soaring glass ceiling on the mall's new wing, which is located where the old Eaton's store once was, on the mall's east side.
"We wanted to recreate the experience of being outdoors," says Brown, explaining the thinking behind the glass ceiling, the largest of its kind in North America.
Suspended by an exterior structure and with a nearly seamless, frameless construction, the ceiling does invite the sunshine of a fresh spring day into the mall. The new atrium rises 18 metres above a wide avenue that's home to multi-level flagships for Old Navy, Zara and H&M.
Existing structures will be updated to match the expansion over the next two years, with new limestone floors, more skylights, and new seating.
Yorkdale's architect aimed to reduce stimulation in the mall's common space. "We're really trying to make the storefronts the predominant element," says Brown.
To do that, the mall worked with retailers to help them create upscale storefronts resembling those on outdoor streets in cities such as New York and Chicago, says Yorkdale's manager, John Giddings.
"If you look closely, the H&M store is slightly nicer than the one on Bloor St." says Giddings, explaining that the Swedish multi-national tweaks its storefronts depending on the surrounding neighbourhood.
Co-owned by one Canada's largest pension funds, the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, along with an unnamed institutional investor, Yorkdale was the first fully enclosed mall in Toronto when it opened in 1964.
Yorkdale's $61 million facelift opens next week
Apple store won't open till May
Last major reno was in 1997
DAPHNE GORDON
LIFE WRITER
When Yorkdale Mall spends $61 million renovating and adding new stores, diehard shoppers get excited.
"I heard there's an Apple store coming," says Amy Cohen, 21, a student who visits Yorkdale about once a week.
"I have a Mac fetish, so I'll probably be spending a lot of time there. I went to the store in New York and it was so cool. I spent an entire afternoon there even though I didn't actually buy anything."
The mall with the chi-chi reputation and the highest sales per square foot of any enclosed mall in Canada has the clout to attract major new retailers to Canada. And even though Apple won't be open in time for Yorkdale's official unveiling at 9:30 Wednesday morning — it's set to open in mid-May — the computer and electronics store is the most exciting name on the list of stores set to debut there this spring.
Other new-to-Canada retailers setting up shop at Yorkdale include the Spanish women's fashion retailer Mango, which follows the H&M and Zara formula of up-to-the minute fashions at too-cheap-to-say-no prices; Geox, the Italian shoe brand known for its stylish and technologically advanced "no-sweat" shoes, and Billabong, the clothing label with a youthful, surfer vibe.
A new Sephora store, bigger than the only other Toronto location at Eaton Centre, and the first mall location for the rapidly expanding Canadian yoga wear brand Lululemon will also be meccas for uptown shoppers.
As for the rest of the stores, well, we've seen many of them before. Yorkdale's expansion will add increasingly common fashion retailers H&M, Zara, Tristan & America, Transit, Urban Behavior, United Colors of Benneton, Old Navy, Sunglass Hut and Tommy Hilfiger, among others, to the Yorkdale shopping experience.
Not that there's anything wrong with those stores, but it does appear that Toronto's three major malls now house many of the same retail tenants.
Altogether, there will be more than 40 new stores and 16,700 square metres of new retail space.
So will a trip to the new Yorkdale be romantic at all? What will set it apart from the iconic downtown outpost the Eaton Centre and the value-oriented suburban newcomer Vaughan Mills?
A hard-hat tour of the expansion last week revealed that Yorkdale, which was last renovated in 1997 to add a 10-screen theatre, aims to set itself apart from uppity competition by offering a shopping experience that's sort of like shopping on Bloor St., minus the weather.
"The idea was to create a contemporary, urban shopping experience," says architect Chris Brown, of the Canadian architecture firm MMC International. He gazes up at the soaring glass ceiling on the mall's new wing, which is located where the old Eaton's store once was, on the mall's east side.
"We wanted to recreate the experience of being outdoors," says Brown, explaining the thinking behind the glass ceiling, the largest of its kind in North America.
Suspended by an exterior structure and with a nearly seamless, frameless construction, the ceiling does invite the sunshine of a fresh spring day into the mall. The new atrium rises 18 metres above a wide avenue that's home to multi-level flagships for Old Navy, Zara and H&M.
Existing structures will be updated to match the expansion over the next two years, with new limestone floors, more skylights, and new seating.
Yorkdale's architect aimed to reduce stimulation in the mall's common space. "We're really trying to make the storefronts the predominant element," says Brown.
To do that, the mall worked with retailers to help them create upscale storefronts resembling those on outdoor streets in cities such as New York and Chicago, says Yorkdale's manager, John Giddings.
"If you look closely, the H&M store is slightly nicer than the one on Bloor St." says Giddings, explaining that the Swedish multi-national tweaks its storefronts depending on the surrounding neighbourhood.
Co-owned by one Canada's largest pension funds, the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, along with an unnamed institutional investor, Yorkdale was the first fully enclosed mall in Toronto when it opened in 1964.