Luke Craggs' Commentary

Northtown Mall sits on 137 Avenue in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. This is a busy commercial corridor with residential neighbourhoods on either side of it.

Northtown Mall runs approximately west to east. The western half of it used to house a Save on Foods, Tim Hortons, Bank of Montreal, Macini Furniture Store and International Stereo. All of these stores are closed now. The interior of the mall has room for about 20 small retail outlets and a food court with room for maybe a half dozen food outlets. There are only a handful of stores left inside the mall. There is a dress store which, according to a sign on the window, is open limited hours because of the province's labour shortage. There is also a book store called Browsers Books, which from the outside appeared to have neither browsers nor books.

The London Drugs and optical place front onto the the outside and have back entrances into the mall. These two places seem to be the only successful retail outlets.

This mall is directly across the street from the larger and more successful Northgate Mall. Although this end of Edmonton has seen a dramatic increase in popularity and housing prices, Northtown mall has been faced with stiff competition from seemingly endless strip malls all along 137 avenue, along with two other major shopping centres nearby.

Currently (March 2008) the mall is undergoing major renovations. They are building onto the East end of the mall, which will be the home of a new and expanded London Drugs. Once London Drugs has moved out of its current location, the remaining interior of the mall will be closed and converted (along with where London Drugs now sits) into an Asian grocery store. In other words, the enclosed mall will disappear and Northtown Mall will be converted into a strip mall. The MacDonalds that sat in the parking lots for several years was torn down and a new building is replacing it.

Below is a link to a few photos taken in March 2008. We weren't able to get many photos of the interior because security quickly came out and asked us to put the camera away.

Links