WEM and Kingsway are the main culprits in my mind, as is the essential stagnation of the core for 30yrs.
Sure we doubled or tripled the residential population from 4000-8000-12000+, but those numbers are still 100-200% too low to really self-support anything.
Pair that with a Downtown worker population that has been eroded, a very small 20-40 crowd who want to shop, drink, play and the relative ease of which to get to the burbs, malls and power centres and you have a bit of a perfect storm.
Thank god for student growth, but disposable incomes are low and demographics far more likely to shop online.
Time to reinvent what a Downtown retail experience is or could be.
Put an urban IKEA there, perhaps a Canadian Tire and drag Simons from the NE and things begin to shift, but those are unlikely and aspirational given that retail traditionally follows significant growth/density.