Quote:
Originally Posted by Franco401
Offices and call centres in a mall are only effective as short-term gain for landlords and cheap rent for tenants. They take up floor space that could be used for stores, they contribute to the overall atmosphere of stagnation and they remove demand for offices that could be built downtown instead. Champlain isn't about to fall apart because of a call centre taking up floor space that was almost as dead when it was Sears, but this will absolutely hurt it if it's long-term. The call centre in Brookside Mall is a huge reason for it being dead on the inside.
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The Brookside Mall was always a secondary mall though, and its downfall has been inevitable for quite some time.
All over North America there are a ton of mall revitalization projects underway, all of which are bringing mixed uses to formerly retail-only malls. Granted, most of these involve the conversion of surface parking into multi-storey office and residential buildings, but this could be a first step towards something like that for CF Champlain.