Pacific Mall facts for kids
Main entrance to Pacific Mall
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| Location | Markham, Ontario, Canada | ||||||||||
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| Coordinates | 43°49′35″N 79°18′23″W / 43.82639°N 79.30639°W | ||||||||||
| Opening date | 1996 or 1997 | ||||||||||
| Developer | The Torgan Group | ||||||||||
| Owner | Pacific Mall Condominium Corporation | ||||||||||
| No. of stores and services | 450 | ||||||||||
| Total retail floor area | 270,000 sq ft (25,084 m2) | ||||||||||
| No. of floors | 3 | ||||||||||
| Public transit access |  43A 53 953  Route 8 Kennedy  |
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| Chinese name | |||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 太古廣場 | ||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 太古广场 | ||||||||||
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Pacific Mall is an Asian shopping mall in Markham, Ontario, Canada. It is the largest indoor Asian shopping mall in North America, and has been reported as the largest Asian shopping mall in the Western world. The mall is located on the northeast corner of Steeles Avenue and Kennedy Road, along the city limits with Toronto. Opened in the mid-1990s amid a period of significant Chinese immigration to Canada, the mall operates as a condominium corporation with 450 individual units. The mall also includes Heritage Town, a food court and market that functions as a notable tourist destination in the Greater Toronto Area.
The Remington Centre, a proposed shopping mall first announced in 2005, would occupy the site formerly held by Market Village, a now-defunct mall adjacent to Pacific Mall. The expansion would see the construction of a structure that would bring the combined size of the malls to 1,000,000 square feet (90,000 m2), though the project has faced numerous delays. Pacific Mall is further noted as a location for the sale of counterfeit goods; stores in Pacific Mall have been raided multiple times by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and in 2018 the mall was listed as a notorious market by the Office of the United States Trade Representative.
Contents
History
Pre-Pacific Mall
Pacific Mall is built on the site formerly occupied by Cullen Country Barns, a farm-themed complex opened in 1983 that housed shops, a theatre, and restaurants. The complex was established by Len Cullen, the founder of Cullen Gardens and Miniature Village in Whitby, Ontario, and consisted of two barn wings with gambrel roofs and a concrete silo. None were historic structures dating back to the time when the site was a working farm, but they were acquired by Cullen and moved from Pickering, Ontario, to Markham in the 1970s. A fire damaged part of the complex in 1988, and it was demolished in 1994; some portions of the former Market Village, a shopping complex adjacent to Pacific Mall, mimicked the Cullen complex.
Opening and continued operation
Sources report Pacific Mall as opening either in 1996 or 1997. Its Cantonese name, "太古廣場" (Tai Gu Gwong Cheung), is derived from Pacific Place in Hong Kong. At the time of its opening, Pacific Mall was the only mall of any kind of its scale in Scarborough and Markham. The mall's 715 retail condos were presold by 1993 for an average of $200 per square foot, and were priced from $59,800 to $249,800. A majority of condo buyers originated from Hong Kong, where Pacific Mall units were advertised extensively; many investors purchased units in Pacific Mall in order to fulfill the $250,000 investment requirement of CANIIP.
After business at the mall was initially slow, half of the unused second floor (which is owned and operated by Torgan Group, rather than condo leasees) was renovated in 1999 into Heritage Town, a food court and market that contains approximately 100 vendors. Aimed at attracting tourists and non-Chinese customers, Torgan Group commissioned artists and sculptors in China to make custom decorations for Heritage Town, including a large bas-relief of a dragon, 300 lanterns, an emperor's chair, a wood-work bridge, and terracotta soldiers. Heritage Town was successful in attracting additional business, prompting the mall to seek and be awarded designation as a Canadian Tourist Attraction. As such, Pacific Mall is exempt from the Retail Business Holiday Act and is open year-round, including statutory holidays.
Today, Pacific Mall remains a major destination for tourism in Canada, and promotes itself through pamphlets at airports and tourist information centers in major North American cities. As demographics of Chinese migrants to Canada shifted in 2010s, and immigrants from mainland China form a greater proportion of Chinese immigrants, many businesses at Pacific Mall have opted to hire salespeople fluent in Cantonese, Mandarin, and English. Though stores in the mall are noted for having relatively high turnover, many stores continue to be operated by their initial Hong Kong-originating owners.
Features
Stores
Pacific Mall is the largest indoor Asian shopping mall in North America and has been reported as the largest Asian shopping mall in the Western world. The mall is surrounded by an existing shopping plaza, including remnants of the former Market Village, which collectively encompass over 500 stores and 1,500 indoor and outdoor parking spaces. Stores range in size from 300 to 800 square feet (28 to 74 m2) and sell a wide variety of goods, including traditional Chinese clothing, contemporary fashion, jewelry, herbal medicine, tea, electronics, mobile phones, ornaments, food, and printed material such as Chinese books, magazines and newspapers. A "diminishing number" of stores sell both legitimate and pirated CDs and DVDs; the decline in the sale of these goods can be attributed to regular police raids and the growing ubiquity of this material online.
As a condominium corporation, store owners elect representatives to form a management board, which oversees the operation of the mall.
Design
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Pacific Mall was designed by Wallman Clewes Bergman Architects, who built the structure in a combination of red brick, steel beams, and glass. The firm sought to create a "fabulous transparent building as different as possible from its surrounding," but rather than emulate Chinese architecture, sought to create a building that complimented Markham's suburban architecture. The mall's market-style interior with exposed roof trusses, pipes, and roof decks is described as "good representation of shed typology that is characterized by mass production, cost efficiency, and fast construction."
The mall has two floors and a basement level that leads to an underground parking lot. The hallways of the main floor are arranged in a grid, with each hallway given a street name: hallways running north–south are named after streets in Hong Kong, such as Hennessy Avenue, Hollywood Avenue, Pacific Avenue, Queen's Avenue, and Nathan Avenue, while hallways running east–west are numerical with numbers associated with affluence and luck in Cantonese, such as 218th Street and 188th Street. The centre of the mall contains an indoor courtyard with a cathedral dome ceiling and stage that hosts cultural programs and trade fairs. The second floor contains a food court, entertainment centre, medical offices, additional shops, and Heritage Town.
Future expansion
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On June 15, 2005, Pacific Mall and Market Village announced a 400,000-square-foot (37,000-square-metre) expansion that would see the construction of additional retail space, a luxury hotel, condominiums, and a multi-level parking structure that would bring the combined size of the malls to 1,000,000 square feet (90,000 m2). In 2009, the developers announced they would instead demolish Market Village and construct a new adjoining mall, the Remington Centre. The project has faced numerous delays; while the expansion plan was endorsed by Markham City Council in 2011, it requires additional approvals from the municipal government of Toronto and a majority of the ownership of Pacific Mall, 40 percent of which is composed of individual retailers.
Transportation access
Pacific Mall is located at the corner of Steeles Avenue and Kennedy Road in Markham, along the city limits with Toronto. It is served by both the Toronto Transit Commission (routes 43 Kennedy and 53 Steeles East) and York Region Transit (Route 8 Kennedy) buses, and is located within walking distance of the Milliken GO Station, which connects to the Stouffville line. The two street entrances to the mall are located at Redlea Avenue and Clayton Drive.
Images for kids
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Entrance to Heritage Town, a renovated portion of the mall that was opened in 1999.
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A store at Pacific Mall. The glass exterior walls and small interior square footage are defining features of the mall's condo-style units.
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Pacific Mall in 2005.
