Kingston Centre
Encyclopedia
The Kingston Centre was an indoor mall built in Kingston, Ontario
Kingston, Ontario
Kingston, Ontario is a Canadian city located in Eastern Ontario where the St. Lawrence River flows out of Lake Ontario. Originally a First Nations settlement called "Katarowki," , growing European exploration in the 17th Century made it an important trading post...

 in 1955 and demolished in 2004. The Kingston Centre name now belongs to a 223327 sq ft (20,747.8 m²). campus-style open-air shopping centre on the same site, which replaced the now-demolished indoor mall.

Anchored by the Loblaws supermarket, the current Kingston Centre is, like its predecessor, located beside a Canadian Tire
Canadian Tire
Canadian Tire Corporation, Limited is one of Canada's 60 largest publicly traded companies. The firm operates an inter-related network of businesses engaged in retailing hardgoods, apparel and petroleum as well as financial and automotive services, employing more than 58,000 people across Canada...

 store and bordered by Sir John A. Macdonald Blvd, Bath Road
Highway 33 (Ontario)
King's Highway 33, commonly referred to as Highway 33, is a provincially maintained highway in the Canadian province of Ontario. The route begins at Highway 62 in Bloomfield and travels east to the Collins Bay Road junction at Collins Bay in the city of Kingston, a distance of...

 and Princess Street
Highway 2 (Ontario)
King's Highway 2, usually referred to simply as Highway 2 is a provincially maintained highway in Ontario. Once the primary east–west route across the southern end of the province, Highway 2 became mostly redundant in the 1960s following the completion of Highway 401, which more or less...

.

Anchors & Majors

  • Loblaws
    Loblaws
    Loblaws is a supermarket chain with over 70 stores in Canada, headquartered in Brampton, with stores across Ontario and Quebec. Loblaws is a division of Loblaw Companies Limited, Canada's largest food distributor...

  • Canadian Tire
    Canadian Tire
    Canadian Tire Corporation, Limited is one of Canada's 60 largest publicly traded companies. The firm operates an inter-related network of businesses engaged in retailing hardgoods, apparel and petroleum as well as financial and automotive services, employing more than 58,000 people across Canada...

  • Rexall Pharma Plus
    Katz Group of Companies
    Katz Group of Companies operates over 1,800 pharmacies in Canada and the United States. It is based in Edmonton, Alberta. Daryl Katz is chairman of the Katz Group of Companies.- Katz Group Canada :Katz Group Canada Ltd...

  • Jumbo Video
    Jumbo Video
    Jumbo Video is a Canadian chain of franchised and corporate video stores, owned by Le SuperClub Vidéotron, a division of Quebecor Media Inc. Originally an independent company, Jumbo Video is now essentially the English Canada brand of SuperClub, Quebec's dominant video rental chain, and the two...

  • West Marine
    West Marine
    West Marine is an American company based in Watsonville, California which operates a chain of boating supply and fishing retail stores. They operate over 300 retail stores in North America.-History:...


History

The Kingston Shopping Centre was built in 1955 and anchored by Simpsons-Sears (later Sears Canada
Sears Canada
Sears Canada Inc. is a retailer, headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, that operates in all provinces and territories across Canada with a network of 196 corporate stores, 195 dealer stores, 38 home improvement showrooms, 108 Sears Travel offices and a nationwide home maintenance, repair, and...

) department store. It was located at 1100 Princess Street in what was then the west end of the city, and served as one of two main transfer points for all Kingston Transit
Kingston Transit
Kingston Transit operates the transit service in Kingston, Ontario, Canada as well as to the neighbouring community of Amherstview, in Loyalist Township....

 routes and the starting point for the city's annual Santa Claus parade
Santa Claus parade
Santa Claus parades or Christmas pageants are parades held in some countries to celebrate the official opening of the Christmas season with the arrival of Santa Claus....

. Originally an outdoor mall, it was converted to an enclosed indoor mall in 1970-71, and once boasted 78 stores including the two-storey Sears and a Loblaws
Loblaws
Loblaws is a supermarket chain with over 70 stores in Canada, headquartered in Brampton, with stores across Ontario and Quebec. Loblaws is a division of Loblaw Companies Limited, Canada's largest food distributor...

 supermarket.

The Kingston Shopping Centre retained the title of largest shopping centre in the area until the Cataraqui Town Centre
Cataraqui Town Centre
Cataraqui Town Centre, is a shopping mall located in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. It is the largest mall in southeastern Ontario with over 141 stores. Its anchor stores are The Bay, Zellers and Sears...

 was constructed in 1982 in the former Kingston Township. Before then, its closest rival was the Frontenac Mall, built in 1967 as Kingston's first enclosed mall with 57 stores, anchored by Woolco
Woolco
Woolco was an American-based discount retail chain. It was founded in 1962 in the city of Columbus, Ohio, by the F.W. Woolworth Company. It was a full-line discount department store unlike the five-and-dime Woolworth stores which operated at the time. At its peak, Woolco had hundreds of stores in...

.

Kingston Shopping Centre's retail traffic, once brisk, sharply declined after the relocation of Sears to the Cataraqui Town Centre in 1999. The Loblaws supermarket, relocated into a new building constructed on the site of the former Sears store, became sole anchor. This move, combined with the disappearance of smaller department stores including Biway Stores, Family Fair, Marks and Spencer, Zellers
Zellers
Zellers Inc. is Canada's second-largest chain of mass merchandise discount stores, with locations in communities across Canada. A subsidiary of the Hudson's Bay Company , it has 273 locations across the country....

 and Woolworth
F. W. Woolworth Company
The F. W. Woolworth Company was a retail company that was one of the original American five-and-dime stores. The first successful Woolworth store was opened on July 18, 1879 by Frank Winfield Woolworth in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, as "Woolworth's Great Five Cent Store"...

, left Kingston Shopping Centre without a department store anchor. With one end of the mall a grocery store, the opposite end of the mall (which originally held Loblaws and a food court) was left as an empty ghostbox and eventually boarded up; it was the first section to be razed during the demolition of the remaining indoor mall building in 2004.

Fewer than a dozen retail tenants remained at the time of demolition: a barber shop, a health-food store, two banks, a grocery store, a drugstore, a camera store and a restaurant. These businesses were moved to new buildings constructed in what had been the parking lot of the original indoor mall and remain in operation.

The former department store site is currently occupied by the Loblaws grocery store building, with the rest of the greyfield
Dead mall
A dead mall or greyfield is a shopping mall with a high vacancy rate or a low consumer traffic level, or that is dated or deteriorating in some manner. Many malls in the United States are considered "dead" when they have no surviving anchor store or successor that could serve as an entry into or...

 re-used for new retail construction or left vacant. No part of the original mall structure remains. A large portion of land at the south-western section of the property, vacated by demolition of the original mall, is as yet undeveloped.

The area near the mall includes a large number of apartment buildings built in the 1960s and '70s, with a high percentage of senior citizen residents who made up a large portion of the mall's clientele. Some have complained that the site is “not as pedestrian-friendly as they (the developers) guaranteed it was going to be.”

Kingston Transit

Kingston Centre Transit Terminal, located in the heart of the shopping centre, is a major transfer point for Kingston Transit
Kingston Transit
Kingston Transit operates the transit service in Kingston, Ontario, Canada as well as to the neighbouring community of Amherstview, in Loyalist Township....

; being the terminus for daytime routes 2, 3, 10, 12, and 71 with routes 1, 4 and C passing through. On evenings and Sundays routes 1, 2, C, E12 and E71 provide service.
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