Yarmouth Mall upgrades underway

It’s now time to freshen up and perform some “greening” on the property, says mall manager Linda Deveau. “Trends have changed, looks, and we are changing components,” she said.

At least $250,000 is being spent on renovations to catch up to trends and transform the mall into an environmentally friendly facility with better light fixtures, new flooring and resurfacing. “Even the mats at the doors are recycled from pop bottles. Everything is being updated,” said Deveau.

The mall has 36 tenants and changes are underway there as well with a few departures, new additions and some shuffling taking place. One thing that’s not going to change is the status of one of the mall’s anchor stores.

When asked about the solidarity of Zellers as a tenant, Deveau says she’s heard the rumours about the store moving but they’re not true. “Zellers is absolutely solid. There’s not a grain of truth to it. We’re very pleased that the relationships with our anchors continues to thrive,” she said.

Lawtons Drugs is expanding to almost twice their original size from 7,000 to 13,000 square feet. The work, handled by Rideau Construction, should tentatively be done by mid December.

Fairweather has replaced Suzy Shier, Clothing International has arrived, and GNC, a vitamin/health national chain is under construction.

Deveau says five deals were ready to ink as of mid-October, with four new tenants and the expansion of one existing tenant. “We’re negotiating with a few other tenants so whether they’ll want to race to be open by Christmas or whether they’ll choose to wait until spring, we should know that in a couple of weeks,” she said.

Although concerns about the Main Street shopping area have been voiced in recent years, Deveau says stores in malls are facing many of the same challenges. “We’re struggling with some of the same issues. The glory days of community shopping centres are no longer. If you look back 20 years ago when we built the new Yarmouth mall, there was no Internet shopping at that point. There was no home shopping channel, Sunday shopping, or Bayers Lake, which is easily accessible by rural Nova Scotians. “All of those things calculate in. The landscape has changed. Now we compete with all those things, like everybody else,” she said.

Ironically, Deveau says the trend for shopping districts is going back to the old Main Street look – with one way streets, boutique stores, angle parking, an open-air concept and all stores keeping the same shopping hours. “Interesting to see shopping centre developments looking at old ideas as new ideas,” she said.

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