- by Anne Finlay-Stewart, Editor
Heritage Place mall is for sale - again.
All real estate listings are written like dating profiles, highlighting a property's best features. But the photo of the Sear's sign in two of three banner photos on the listing reminds me that people watching "You've Got Mail" believed they too could end up with Meg Ryan or Tom Hanks.
Among the interesting bits from the real estate listing for Heritage Place Mall include things that are not there, and things that are not there yet.
The numbers in real estate listings are generally very precise. We are having some difficulty determining the sources for these.
"While Owen Sound features a small population of about 33,000, the total trade area encompasses over 100,000 residents."
The population of Owen Sound plus 50% of Meaford residents and 50% of Georgian Bluffs' people would make "about" 33,000. The population of Grey County - from Dundalk to Hanover to Mount Forest - is just shy of 94,000.
The Heritage Place Mall website itself says "Heritage Place represents the focal point for a wide trade area consisting of 171,000 people, 40% of whom live within a 15-minute drive of the centre."
Do that math – it is the population of all of Grey and all of Bruce Counties plus most of Collingwood, and to get 40 percent of them to the mall in under 15 minutes would involve some serious street-racing.
Now do not think I am holding a grudge from way back in 2015 when I was escorted out of this same mall by a security guard who took my licence number and warned me not to come back. (A personal first!)
Back then I was already concerned about the state of the mall, and I was counting the number of stores, open and closed. The mall website at the time said there were "60 brand name retail stores" but there were really only 42 open, including the kiosks, and seven of those were mobile phone providers. The seven remaining food outlets were included in that number at the time, three of which were not actually in the "only enclosed mall in Grey and Bruce". Only four of those remain today.
Heritage Place Mall is a large local employer. Not only do the businesses need staffing 75 or so hours a week, but the parking lot needs ploughing and paving; washrooms, floors and all that glass needs cleaning; plumbing, wiring, heating and cooling need maintenance and repair, and of course the whole thing needs to be kept safe from people like me – and worse.
As our local unemployment numbers continue to be very low, mall retailers are competing with businesses that can provide more generous pay, transportation options, training and advancement opportunities and benefits both tangible and intangible.
The future of the 31 year old Heritage Place Mall – the highly visible space in our City, the Owen Sound residents who work there, and the huge paved footprint – will depend on whether or not it finds new ownership and who that might be. The current ownership is a 50 per cent split between Kingsett Growth LP and the Ontario Pension Board.
The North American experience has shown us examples of creative changes in malls, and some community-destroying failures.
We look forward to hearing about this in our upcoming municipal election discussions.
photo credit: Owen Sound Flight Services
