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TravellingChris said:
You could argue that major retail's fate was sealed in the downtown when The Bay opened a store at Kingsway in 1988. Remember after that The Bay shrank its store on Jasper Avenue dramatically. Then once HBC took over Woodward's, The Bay eventually moved its downtown store to Edmonton Centre (as it was then), which hurt Jasper Avenue and the surrounding businesses. And The Bay didn't even take over all of Woodward's but only operated about 60% of the anchor space in Edmonton Centre.

Between The Bay leaving Jasper Avenue and Eaton's closing (robbing downtown of yet another anchor that wasn't replaced) this sucked a lot of life out of the area.
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I can understand why you're saying that, but I stumbled across an article in Retail Insider about the Bay closing in 2020. https://retail-insider.com/retail-i...ay-exiting-downtown-edmonton-after-207-years/

The article fits my own understanding of Downtown over the last 15 years. Obviously, the days of Jasper Ave as the retail heart of Edmonton are long over, but there was serious momentum towards revitalization in the late 00s and 2010s, including on the retail/services side. The article highlights that, prior to the oil price slump in 2015, there were plans to move Holt Renfrew into an expanded space in City Centre where Woodwards used to be, alongside Target and allegedly Oxford looked at replacing the Bay with Nordstrom in CCM. I can't help but wonder what Downtown's trajectory would've been like had that happened (of course Target pulled out of the country shorty thereafter). It's hard not to imagine it creating a pull that would've attracted other big-name retailers that could've complemented local businesses as the retail landscape downtown became healthier. 20 years ago, 104th Street was imagined to be the next Whyte Ave, and, as pleasant as it is, it never really got there, while 124th, 118th, etc are still pretty quiet too.

All of this is to say that there's maybe an alternate universe out there (if you believe in that sort of thing) where Edmonton's downtown retail is thriving, or at least doing alright for itself. If Oxford remained bullish on City Centre, it could've tipped the scales and made Downtown a formidable retail destination. It's unlikely it'd ever compete with WEM, but even being a secondary destination a la Whyte, Southgate, SEC, Kingsway would've been great. And I think this prior momentum shows that the fate also doesn't have to be sealed going forward. Department stores are a dying breed, anyway.
 
Oxford pitched a Holt to move into the SC/Atm space with little effect, as Manulife worked to retain them; while this may have changed the trajectory at the time, it would have bene short-lived .

By this time OP was done with ECC and moving on to larger centres which did not include little ol' Edmonton.

Pair this with Escada and others departing/closing and it was fate accomplished.
 
My thinking is that regardless of if these 3 stayed long term (and 2 out of the 3 aren't in Canada anymore, so there's that), they could've provided a window of interest in Downtown retail and could've seen H&M (which was planned until Oxford lured them to a bigger Kingsway CRU), Urban Outfitters, Uniqlo, Zara, RW&Co, etc and maybe even bigger retailers like Best Buy, Staples (back to DT), or Rona/Home Depot/Home Hardware such that there would've been a critical mass of retail support by the time covid came around. There still would've been a direct hit, like any city, but maybe we'd be looking at a Downtown retail vibrancy sort of on the level of Calgary or Ottawa (or slightly below), instead of Hamilton and Winnipeg.
 
H&M had ink drying on the ECC deal in the former Urban and current bank space on the NWC of 101/102, until a visit from corp/Tdot pushed them to Kingsway as it was 'Downtown' and had free parking.

Calgary is not comparable, but Ottawa certainly is... along with the Peg.
 
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Buy Buy Baby space is sitting empty and forlorn

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Coming soon

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former Bed Bath & Beyond space

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Nike is gonna be bigger than I thought!

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Which holiday?

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My favorite hangout at WEM has shut down. Dunno if permanent or just renovating.

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L.L. Bean expansion

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Phase 1 food court ;)

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They really need to do something with that whale. It literally looks like they just dropped it on a random place in the mall without any foresight or thought.
 
dunno said:
They really need to do something with that whale. It literally looks like they just dropped it on a random place in the mall without any foresight or thought.
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Yes but it's better than anything Triple5 would replace it with at this point.
 
dunno said:
They really need to do something with that whale. It literally looks like they just dropped it on a random place in the mall without any foresight or thought.
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Not sure if there is an absolute "ideal" place to drop a Humpback Whale" in a mall. I suppose next to the Pirate ship? And we could pretend it's a whaling ship?
 
I always see a few families snapping pics with kids in the whale's mouth. I fail to see what the problem is.
Wanna know what's a more annoying feature with Phase I? The stupid train with the whistle that's always trying to plow down shoppers!
 
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