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Just don’t call it a mall

Shops at Don Mills opens new โ€˜urban villageโ€™

 

SHOPS AT DON MILLS, a new, large- scale, outdoor retail development, opened its doors on April 22.

The new shopping centre, located at the corner of Don Mills Road and Lawrence Avenue East, boasts 100 new stores, including several retail stores that are unavailable anywhere else in Toronto. Salomon Sports opened its first non-resort store in the shopping centre, and funky fashion and houseware shop Anthropologie opened its first Canadian store in the mall.

“I’m getting a lot of favourable comments,” said Coun. Cliff Jenkins.

“I’m excited about the opening, and I’m excited about what it’s going to look like as a finished product.”

The shopping centre also offers a McNally-Robinson bookstore, chef Mark McEwan’s first gourmet food store and Glow, a restaurant that offers chef Rose Reisman’s healthy menu items.

“This is really meant to be a place for the community,” said Anne Morash, Cadillac Fairview’s vice-president of development.

While the centre is a shopping centre, it will also have office space with medical services, financial planning services and travel agencies.

There will also be a dry cleaner and a liquor store.

The property management company calls the centre an “urban village” because, unlike other malls, it is entirely outdoor, with a design that reflects a street shopping experience.

The new shopping centre replaced the Don Mills Centre, an indoor mall, which closed to make way for the new centre.

“We are happy to see some stores sprouting up,” said Simone Gabbay, a Don Mills resident and the founder and communications liaison for the Don Mills Friends group.

“We’ve been without any stores or any possibility to shop on this site for three years. It’s been a wasteland.”

But Gabbay said even though she’s pleased the centre is up and running, she’s concerned that the families, seniors and disabled people who used the old mall as a meeting place will not have facilities like they had before.

“The new stores will no doubt be attractive, but a climate- controlled, car-free environment would have been safer and far more convenient for everyone, especially for our seniors, disabled friends, and families with young children,” she wrote in an e-mail.

Morash said she and her team worked to meet the needs of everyone in the community, but that the outdoor concept was important to making the
development successful.

“ I’m excited about the opening, and I’m excited about what it’s going to look like as a finished product.”

“The people who live in this community were saying, ‘We want someplace to walk to, that’s not too big and overwhelming, and we just want to park once,’” Morash said. Because of that, there are two battery charging stations within the complex for wheelchairs, and there is a town square and many outdoor areas that are covered that people can use to socialize.

She said the mall is also pedestrian-friendly, with extra wide sidewalks on winding roads.

Morash added that she is confident that people will still want to shop at the centre when cold weather comes back next winter.

“Torontonians are a hearty bunch,” she said.

Article exclusive to STREETS OF TORONTO