Sunday, December 17, 2006

West Edmonton Mall II?

I've been hearing rumours about a new shopping mall destined for the Calgary area, but the details have been coming in dribs and drabs. I finally found more information on it (thanks to Ernest), but its future is still uncertain.

The mall would be called Crossiron Mills and it would be patterned after Vaughan Mills outside of Toronto. But it's actually part of a huge complex that would include a horse race track ...errr Equine Centre, casino and some major hotels. At almost a million square feet, the mall will be quite large - the stated number of stores (180) is deceivingly low. There is currently an issue about where this huge development would get its water, so it will be interesting to see how much this delays the ball rolling. On the official web site, they're optimistically planning a 2008 opening.

Personally, I think this development is perfect - in fact the planners may be thinking too small. While the south half of Calgary and area is well serviced by malls, the north end is not. I take into account the nearby communities of Airdrie, the huge development still planned for Simons Valley and the entire north half of Calgary which will be serviced by the ring road, which would open up the mall to areas like Cochrane, Springbank, Bearspaw, etc.

Not to mention that the chosen site is a mere 8.5km up the highway from the Calgary International Airport (versus the 32km West Edmonton Mall is from their airport). See where I'm going with this?

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