Midtown (mall) facts for kids
Midtown main entrance showing the tower
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| Coordinates | 52°07′39″N 106°40′03″W / 52.127500°N 106.667500°W |
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| Address | 201 1st Avenue South Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7K 1J9 |
| Opening date | 1968 (Simpson-Sears only); July 30, 1970 (full mall); renovated 1990, 2004, 2019 |
| Management | Terry Napper |
| No. of stores and services | 154 |
| No. of anchor tenants | 1 |
| Total retail floor area | 616,282 sq ft (57,254.5 m2) / 96,883 sq ft (9,000.7 m2) retail |
| No. of floors | 2 (mall) 11 (tower) |
| Parking | 1,000 surface north, south and Sears lot and 800 underground |
Midtown (formerly Midtown Plaza) is a shopping mall in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, located in the Central Business District neighbourhood. The main anchor store is Hudson's Bay, with one vacant anchor last occupied by Sears and the shopping centre has a total store count of 154 stores. The mall was built on the former site of the city's main railway station as part of a major inner city redevelopment project in the 1960s that also saw construction of a freeway, the Senator Sid Buckwold Bridge, TCU Place (formerly Centennial Auditorium) - an arts-convention complex - and a new facility for the city's YMCA.
The mall officially opened with 51 stores and services - as well as an extensive underground parking garage - on July 30, 1970. One of its anchor tenants, Simpsons-Sears (Sears Canada), opened for business in 1968, but closed January 2018. Eatons was the mall's second anchor until that chain went out of business in the late 1990s. The Bay (later branded Hudson's Bay) subsequently relocated to the mall from its 2nd Avenue standalone location. From its opening until its late-1980s renovation, the mall had a corridor connecting directly to the auditorium, which was usually utilized as an exit from the facility; there was also a corridor connecting the auditorium to the mall's parking garage.
The mall was originally one storey. By 1990, a second storey was added and the façade was altered to mimic the original 1900s railway station. This reconstruction cost $24M. Soon after, Saskatoon's first (and, to date) only Toys "R" Us store opened on a standalone "big-box" location on the mall's southern parking lot; although not physically connected to the mall, it is considered part of the shopping centre.
In Spring 2015, both Bath and Body Works and Victoria's Secret opened stores in the mall.
The shopping centre also welcomed Saskatoon’s first H&M store December 2020.
Also part of the Midtown complex is CN Towers – now "Midtown Tower" – an office block that was for most of the 1970s the tallest office building in Saskatoon. The 12-story tower is 57 m (187 ft) in height. From the early 1970s until the early 2000s, the fifth floor of the office block housed the studios of the local CBC Television affiliate CBKST.
From 1993 to 2005, the mall owned and displayed Gordie Howe statue at the southwest corner of 1st Avenue South and 20th Street East. It was relocated to the SaskTel Centre in 2005.
Following the closure of the Sears Canada chain, the mall began to redevelop the store's space into a new wing with a re-located food court, which opened in July 2019. In November 2018, it was announced that the existing food court area would be redeveloped into an MEC, as its first location in the province. It was originally projected to open in May 2020, but was delayed to late-2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors. The fate of the future store was also questioned in September 2020, when MEC announced that it would be privatized and sold to American investment firm Kingswood Capital Management.
