A Commentary by Doug Draper
Niagara, Ontario’s regional council has given a developer the green light to build what is being marketed as the largest outdoor, outlet mall in Canada off the Queen Elizabeth Way in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
Forget about ‘smarter growth’ or urban renewal. This field out in the hinterlands and off the QEW is where our Niagara, Ontario regional leaders approve of locating the ‘largest’ outlet mall in all of Canada. Photo by Doug Draper
The 720,000-square-foot mall, to be located off the QEW/Glenridge Avenue interchange near a campus of Niagara College and the White Oaks Resort and Spa, will mean a big boost for jobs and business in Niagara, said some of an overwhelming majority of regional councillors who supported it.
“We are always saying that we (as a region) are open for business,” said Niagara-at-Large Lord Mayor David Eke whose (give the fact that the mall is going in his municipality) was the most vocal supporter of the proposal put forward by long-time shopping mall developer Ivanhoe Cambridge of Toronto. “We need to work with these people.”
St. Catharines regional councillor Andy Petrowski, who also spoke forcefully for the mall plan, applauded the regional government’s staff for its recommendation of support for the mall and for “having such an open-for-business attitude. … We are rolling out the red carpet, continued Petrowski who, a week earlier at a planning committee meeting called the project “a game changer for Niagara region.”
Actually, except for the mega-size of this particular mall, it is arguable how much a ‘game-changer’ this is in the region.
The location of this mall alone, way out from the fringes of any of Niagara’s commercial and urban centres (or, in some cases, what used to be the region’s commercial/retail centres) is typical of continued snub this region gives to ‘smarter growth’ and ‘sustainable development’, despite so much hollow rhetoric favouring those concepts, and a ‘smart growth’ advisory committee at the regional government that might just as well be disbanded for all the influence it has on decision making.
Smart growth and sustainable development is about getting away from low-density sprawl into the country sides that demands we drive our cars more and spend taxdollars we don’t necessarily have on more roads and other infrastructure to accommodate this costly form of growth. It is also about rejuvenating our urban centres and the downtown retailers that do business and pay taxes in them and making use of roads, water and sewage lines, and other infrastructure we already have in place rather than spending mega bucks on new infrastructure. And it is about creating more walkable communities, and ones that make it easier for public transit systems to operate a cost-effective service.
Unfortunately, and even since Niagara’s regional government allegedly took an interest in smarter, more sustainable growth principles in recent years, the majority of its elected councillors have voted in favour of building a new super-hospital complex for the Niagara Health System out on the urban fringes of west St. Catharines (costing Niagara residents millions of dollars for road widening and other infrastructure upgrades), and it has given its blessing to big box chains setting up an asphalt jungle in that same end of St. Catharines, and to box chains shifting retailing in Welland to former grass fields off Woodlawn Road and Hwy. 406. There is the low density residential sprawl moving further and further west in Niagara Falls, and the list of not-so-smart-or-sustainable development in this region goes on and on.
“I think (the outlet mall plan) is strategically located,” added Eke during the regional council meeting, and that may be so for people who want to pile into their cars and rush down a provincial highway to a retail palace off one of that highway’s service roads. But what about all of the existing malls and other retailers in Niagara?
One can see the Pen Centre and Fairview Malls in St. Catharines taking a hit from this, not to mention retailers already fighting to survive in that city’s downtown. How about the Niagara Square Mall and other retail outlets along the QEW in Niagara Falls. After all, why would anyone with a car go to these places when they can shoot down the highway to Canada’s largest outlet mall?
Lincoln, Ontario Mayor Bill Hodgson was almost alone in raising concern about the impact this proposed mall may have on existing retailers. It is fine to say that this project, as its supporters claim will create about a thousand new construction jobs during the time it is being built, and more than 1,000 service jobs (most of them likely to be paying wages low enough to keep the employee at or near the poverty line). But what about the jobs and business that may be lost at the other end?
It is sad to think that things are so down in Niagara economically, that we have to make choices for less-than-sustainable development like this just to show that our region “is open for business.”
By the way, you likely won’t read much commentary like this in Niagara’s mainstream press. Their advertising agents, who control editorial content these days, are probably already rubbing their hands together for the advertising they can milk out of this place.
(Niagara At Large invites you so share your views on this post below, remembering that we only post comments by individuals who also share their first and last names.)
Niagara At Large 
I wrote a letter to the editor to the Standard last Saturday, June 9th, which has not been published. Actually all last week, not one letter to the editor was published; replaced mostly by nonsense from the Sun Media editorialists. Either no one has an opinion or our opinions are not that important.
This is what I wrote:
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More Damage to Our Cities
Have we learned nothing! On the June 8th Standard front page we see three hospital sites are leaked and an “XL retail outlet” for NOTL proposed, all of them outside urban areas. Why are we again going to hurt ourselves?
Regional policy promotes Smart Growth which includes encouraging diverse walkable neighbourhoods with healthy and vibrant downtowns. Yet we, through our politicians, continue to permit non-urban development that ensures further damage and sprawl. This must stop.
Are we are really set on repeating the mistake of placing the St. Catharines Hospital outside of the urban fabric? Hospitals are a major urban asset that should be in neighbourhoods where they can be easily associated with residential and related commercial development.
As for the Nike and Dockers outlet, tourists want an authentic regional destination. Locals, who will keep this QEW strip mall afloat for a while, will see it eventually die, but not before this economic leech damages to the really interesting places, including our downtowns (see deadmalls.com).
For years we have known we must be smarter about development to reduce our infrastructure costs, ensure a resilient sustainable environment, and make for more livable cities; and then we get this.
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A further comment: I am so saddened to see how little of the essential Smart Growth principles have gotten through to our politicians and planning staffs. Diverse walkable communities, vibrant downtowns where people want live, density that encourages mass transportation, quality design with a sense of place, enrichment of our heritage sites, etc.; so little has really changed. In some ways we are worse off than before.
We do not have good urban design objectives as a part of our consciousness. Instead, planners do little planning. They are mostly processors of applications moderated by zoning requirements, but usually not in the context of an overall urban design guidelines. The eyes on the prize of good urban development are quickly averted when someone says “jobs” or a new hospital. Planners have little to fall back on to redirect politicians from the low hanging, but rotten fruit.
This is crazy, especially when enough people know better generally sit in the sidelines and bemoan the waste of opportunity to make Niagara a truly great destination and a desirable place in which to live.
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Hi Doug,
Thanks for the reminder that all green field growth doesn’t benefit everyone and some doesn’t make much sense. It’s indeed hard for those who try to beat the drum of sustainable growth and are against inter-municipal business growth-grab competition, as the promoters control all the brass and cacophony of the band.
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I want to start my comment by quoting from the above item:
“The 720,000-square-foot mall, to be located off the QEW/Glenridge Avenue interchange near a campus of Niagara College and the White Oaks Resort and Spa, will mean a big boost for jobs and business in Niagara, said some of an overwhelming majority of regional councillors who supported it.”
A couple of points:
1: a big boost for jobs … the rest of the sentence??? all at minimum wage!
2: Who is going to pay for the road improvements that will be required? The councillors will say “development fees” which is a crock of excrement! Any and all road/sewer/infrastructure improvements should be paid for, upfront, by the developer!
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Thank you for this excellent article, Doug……as always, you are right on the mark. The comments from Gracia Janes and Dick Halverson say it so well. I worry for our downtowns where so much of our built heritage exists; we are just starting to bring some of them back – my own community is moving ahead so well — AND how many stores do we need ?
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Spot on, once again. Doug. Seems like the mega-mall fight between Prudhommes (Ken Fowler) and this super organization is who can get buyers off the QEW faster. Nothing to do but buy yourselves nuts, don’t go into a town or city nearby or take in the history or natural beauty of the Niagara Region.
I thank all the commentors. Particularly interested in Halverson’s comments, as I am aware of a number of people, including me, who have sent letters to the Standard in the last year, and they have never seen the light of day. Two writers, extremely well known and respected, local letter writers were also ignored. And I know of others, lesser folk like me who have been stiffed. One fellow mailed his letter, and when it did not get in, phoned and was told it was lost. So he hand-delivered it to the front desk, yes he did, and asked to have it brought to the attention of the editor. They never printed Mike’s letter. Yet I have had a telephone conversation about 6 months ago with the new ME Wendy Metcalfe about this, and she assured me that every letter was printed, unless libelous. Nonsense. It is noted that infoeditorials are used, rather than those of us local’s letters.
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Reminds me of a comment by Napoleon Bonaparte who once said” England was a nation of shopkeepers:” looks like history is repeating itself, I thought we once had an open air shopping centre , it was called Pen-Centre back in 1968 very cool and windy in the wintertime so they put a roof on it.and now it is ,what it is.
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I realize this was a development hate article, and your right – but this is the most exiting thing I’ve heard in a while “Niagara’s own Mega Mall” cool.
Dear Mr. Jantz, from Niagara At Large publisher and the writer of the article. You choose to do the black and white thing and paint me as a “development hate” person. I suppose you miss the possibility that I have also supported good development news in this region including, most recently, a China-based company’s plans to re-open the old Hayes Dana plant in Niagara and create some manufacturing jobs here in the field of wind energy. You choose to cast me as anti-development because I don’t support the same costly, unsustainable development that you do – namely the proposed mega outlet mall on the outskirts of Niagara-on-the-Lake, which may very well hollow out at least two existing malls in St. Catharines, at least one in Niagara Falls, and a number of the main street Niagara-on-the-Lake stores in the Old Town of that community, so far as we know.
Those possibilities have possibly not occurred to you as you fall into the business of suggesting that anyone who questions a specific development proposal of being a hater of development. Are you a developer? Do you have financial interests in this mall? I cannot thing of any other reasons why someone would not be more open minded when it comes to this proposal. Niagara At Large publisher. Doug Draper
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If we are to become a true tourist destination, and compete with the likes of places such as Florida and New York, we need to expand the shopping options that the tourists have. In Florida, there are 4 or 5 stores in the same area that people actively shop in. If you drive 3 minutes down the street one way, there’s an outlet mall and a Wal-Mart across the street from each other, you drive down the street the other way, turn down the next street and drive for 3 more minutes and there’s ANOTHER outlet mall. ALL of these places have been open for many years, and they are all successful. They also do all of the other things this new mall promises, including employ lots of people. As a side note, isn’t it better for 1,500 people to have a job paying minimum wage rather than 1,500 people being on welfare?? Just saying. If we are to bring money in, this mall is perfect, there are many, many, many retailers that have stores in all of the tourist towns in other places that we do not have here. Those locals that you talk about having to pile into a car and drive all the way across town to get to the mall have to drive to the States or Toronto to go to the stores they want to. As long as the developers play this right and get stores that are wanted and needed this mall will be a GIANT success. I want to re-emphasize a couple of things. 1) more jobs (even if they are minimum wage)= less people on welfare = less tax dollars being spent on welfare, 2) less driving to the states = more money going into our economy = less pollution. This mall CAN be a success, however what the developers need are locals who are willing to help them to make it one.
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