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Toronto has several shopping malls across the city, including five major destination malls that are among the largest and most profitable in Canada. The first enclosed shopping mall in Toronto was the Toronto Arcade in the downtown core. The first shopping mall of the enclosed, automobile-centred design type was Yorkdale Shopping Centre, which opened in 1964.
Toronto's five major shopping centres each have over one hundred stores and are anchored by multiple department stores, international brands and luxury retailers. They are also the five largest malls in Toronto by floor space. Each provides thousands of automobile parking spaces. With the exceptions of Sherway Gardens and Scarborough Town Centre, all of these malls have direct pedestrian connections with the Toronto subway system, though Sherway Gardens has a bus terminal connecting Toronto Transit Commission and MiWay bus routes and Scarborough Town Centre was connected to Scarborough Centre station of Line 3 Scarborough until the line's permanent closure in July 2023, though the former station still has an active bus terminal. Yorkdale Shopping Centre is Toronto's first of its kind and was the world's largest shopping mall at the time of opening, [1] while Toronto Eaton Centre is the most visited shopping mall in North America. These five malls were completed within a 13-year span in the 1960s and 1970s. The five malls are owned by either Cadillac Fairview or Oxford Properties, two of Canada's largest commercial real estate investment companies. A sixth major mall is planned by Cadillac Fairview in Toronto's planned East Harbour neighbourhood by the intersection of Don Valley Parkway and Gardiner Expressway / Lake Shore Boulevard and be also served by the planned East Harbour Transit Hub on the Ontario Line and GO Transit's Lakeshore East line. [2]
| Name | District | Major intersection | Direct subway connection | Developer/operator | Retail space | Year opened |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fairview Mall | North York | Don Mills Road—Sheppard Avenue | Don Mills | Cadillac Fairview | 81,874 m2 (881,280 sq ft) | 1970 |
| Scarborough Town Centre | Scarborough | McCowan Road—Highway 401 | Scarborough Centre (closed since July 2023) | Oxford Properties | 121,467 m2 (1,307,460 sq ft) | 1973 |
| Sherway Gardens | Etobicoke | The Queensway—The West Mall | Cadillac Fairview | 109,800 m2 (1,182,000 sq ft) | 1971 | |
| Toronto Eaton Centre | Old Toronto | Yonge Street—Dundas Street Yonge Street—Queen Street | Dundas Queen | Cadillac Fairview | 159,979 m2 (1,722,000 sq ft) | 1977 |
| Yorkdale Shopping Centre | North York | Allen Road—Highway 401 | Yorkdale | Oxford Properties | 171,473 m2 (1,845,720 sq ft) | 1964 |
The district or neighbourhood level of shopping centres in Toronto are typically built around one or a few department stores or grocery supermarkets and are enclosed. These shopping centres typically provide a surrounding free parking lot. Most of these are located in the suburbs of Toronto, where land was available for parking. There are only two shopping malls of this type within Toronto's pre-1998 city limits: Dufferin Mall (on Dufferin Street south of Bloor Street and north of College Street) and Gerrard Square (on Gerrard Street East east of Pape Avenue and west of Jones Avenue). The third shopping mall in Old Toronto, Galleria Shopping Centre (at Dufferin Street and Dupont Street), was demolished in January 2020 and is being replaced with condo developments. There are a few ethnic malls of this type as well. Woodbine Centre has Fantasy Fair, a small indoor amusement park.
One configuration of shopping mall in Toronto is the self-contained type located within a commercial office building, sometimes around a central atrium. This type typically does not provide a surrounding parking lot. These malls typically house from a dozen to several dozen stores. Most of these are connected to a station of the Toronto subway system. In the case of the Hudson's Bay Centre, the mall connects the department store to the Toronto subway system at Bloor–Yonge station. Some of these malls can be located in the taller condominium towers. These malls are located in the core (Old Toronto), unless marked otherwise:
In Downtown Toronto, primarily in the Financial District, there are interconnected shopping malls located at least one flight of stairs underground. The complex as a whole is named 'Path'. The Toronto Eaton Centre (see above) is connected to the complex. The complex has 1,200 stores, and according to Guinness World Records , the Path is the largest underground shopping complex in the world with 371,600 m2 (4,000,000 sq ft) of retail space. [4]
Open-air shopping plazas are larger collections of stores built with surrounding parking areas, with parking spaces separated from the storefronts by sidewalks. These shopping centres generally serve the local surrounding area and have a large proportion of family-run businesses, some of which serve ethnic communities.
Power centres mainly consist of major national and international big-box stores with large amounts of parking space separate from the stores themselves, and which serve a larger area than the open-air shopping plazas do.
The markets are housed indoors with stalls of independent vendors.
The following shopping malls have been demolished or closed. Some have been replaced by new strip plazas or re-developed for non-retail uses:
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Eglinton Avenue is a major east–west arterial thoroughfare in Toronto and Mississauga in the Canadian province of Ontario. The street begins at Highway 407 at the western limits of Mississauga, as a continuation of Lower Baseline in Milton. It traverses the midsection of both cities and ends at Kingston Road. Eglinton Avenue is the only street to cross all six former cities and boroughs of Metropolitan Toronto.
Sheppard Avenue is an east–west principal arterial road in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The street has two distinct branches near its eastern end, with the original route being a collector road leading to Pickering via a turnoff, and the main route following a later-built roadway which runs south to Kingston Road. To avoid name duplication, the Toronto portion of the northern branch was renamed Twyn Rivers Drive. The section of the street entirely in Toronto is (34.2 km) in length, while the Pickering section and Twyn Rivers Dr. is (5.4 km) long.
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Dufferin Street is a major north–south street in Toronto, Vaughan and King, Ontario, Canada. It is a concession road, two concessions (4 km) west of Yonge Street. The street starts at Exhibition Place, continues north to Toronto's northern boundary at Steeles Avenue with some discontinuities and continues into Vaughan, where it is designated York Regional Road 53. The street is named for Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, who served as Governor General of Canada from 1872 to 1878. Prior to 1878, the street was labelled as Western City Limits or Sideline Road south off Bloor. In 2003 and 2007, it was voted as one of "Ontario's Worst 20 Roads" in the Ontario's Worst Roads poll organized by the Canadian Automobile Association.
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