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Sherway Gardens Pictures?

I do really like Sherway and it's still probably the best looking mall, but it's become very dated very quickly. Based on competitive cycles, I'd expect Sherway to be preparing for a massive renovation in the near future.
 
I remember a while back Sherway wanted to add a second floor. I assume that's not happening anymore? CF get cold feet?
 
I mourn the gentrification of the great malls of Toronto - Yorkdale, Sherway Gardens, Square One, Scarborough Town Centre, and of course, The Eaton Centre.
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One mall I'm not shedding tears for over its "gentrification" is Fairview. They have really done a great job with the renovation.

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Alvar said:
Square One was amazing. So sad to see that the last renovation completely destroyed any vestiges of the original mall. Really, such a classic. I mourn the gentrification of the great malls of Toronto - Yorkdale, Sherway Gardens, Square One, Scarborough Town Centre, and of course, The Eaton Centre.
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"Classic", maybe, more in that it survived at all. However, IMO Square One embodied a certain creeping mid-70s blandification of the mall-building art, i.e. it was too much of the same generation as the enclosure of the Don Mills Centre...
 
scarberiankhatru said:
I do really like Sherway and it's still probably the best looking mall, but it's become very dated very quickly. Based on competitive cycles, I'd expect Sherway to be preparing for a massive renovation in the near future.
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Considering how it's pushing 40, I don't know what you mean by "very quickly"--in fact, as evidenced by the former Simpson's Court and the former photo-murals outside, the most 1971-stylish parts of it "dated" so quickly, they were practically already borderline retro-chic within a decade of completion and are now the most regrettably short-sighted losses of all.

Though I seem to recall that Sherway was always a hard mall to "warm" to--after all, it heralded the arrival in Toronto of the 70s everything-on-diagonals bunker-mall aesthetic, whose earthbound quality here was compounded by its being single-storey. (In a way, it was in reaction to malls like Sherway that the skylighted galleria style of the Eaton Centre came to seem so exhilarating--and of course, Zeidler later did the tented food court here. Worth noting is that its Gourmet Fair predecessor was probably the first fully-formed food-court-as-we-know-it in Toronto.)

If there's stylish virtue to Sherway, it's in its brick-not-concrete spin on the bunker aesthetic (especially at Eatons/Sears)
 
^ I'm thinking of the food tent, mainly. Yorkdale and other malls have already been renovated to eliminate 90s elements, but the food tent still has brass fixtures...walking up that glass staircase is like walking into 1992. I doubt they'll hang on to it long enough for the 90s to become chic again, particularly if Woodbine Live! takes off.
 
The tent itself is probably sacrosanct, if only because it's Sherway's most spectacular "architectural landmark"--although it does seem rather stapled-on relative to the rest of the mall. Any change'll likely be cosmetic rather than total-rebuild...
 
as a way of patterning consumer behaviour, there seem to have been two paths that malls could take in the later 1970's--they could either orient themselves around the idea of the village or the arcade.

The Eaton Centre's deliberate referencing of Milan, the Crystal Palace, etc. obviously won out. this is essentially a model of shopping as a form of spectacle. malls became backdrops for promenading, places to see and be seen...

the other abandoned route is of course, the model promoted by Sherway, where the reference is to the market, the village or the lane. this version was manifest in a bunch of smaller indoor malls, including the original Village by the Grange, Bayview Village and Hazelton Lanes.

interestingly, this image of "decentralized rambling" is still with us in the form of places like Le Marche Movenpick / Richtree Market etc, and stores like the newish Hollister in the Eaton Centre...
 
Bayview was originally a humble outdoor shopping mall built to a basic cross plan. Yorkdale had some quite showy spaces when it opened, obviously predating the Eaton Centre, so I think the concept of promenading and being seen was always a part of the experience.

The first underground shopping concourses ( now part of PATH ) were designed as simple lanes for "decentralized rambling" but that gave way pretty quickly to a more flamboyant look with showy focal points ( FCP with a waterfall, a white marble disco-era atrium several storeys tall, and colourful wall hangings; the original but now totally desecrated Royal Bank Plaza which was centered around an atrium with a garden and waterfall below and a rod-shaped sculpture suspended from the ceiling many floors above; Scotia Plaza - less successfully perhaps; Zeidler's renovation to Commerce Court with a subterranean food court as the focus; and the creation of the TD Centre's food court ).
 
Sherway had plans to build a second floor? When was this? That would make sense, so they don't end up pushing Zara or H&M to the fringe like the Old Navy across the street.
 
You mean the 'mini' big-box centre across the street? Sherway Gardens is just the right size. Heaven forbid it should become a Square One, with dreadfull parking structures hiding the mall's exterior.
 
samsonyuen said:
Sherway had plans to build a second floor? When was this? That would make sense, so they don't end up pushing Zara or H&M to the fringe like the Old Navy across the street.
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This was a while ago. I'm sure it was Square One that objected.

I'd expect retailers like Zara and H&M have already signed leases with Sherway, they just are waiting on getting a space the right size.
 
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