Shopping malls need shoppers
A ‘world-class address’: Nowhere else will you find such desolation and gloom as in the solitude of The Shops at Aura
National Post
By: Calum Marsh
07 October 2016
Christopher Katsarov for National Post
You descend the mall-bound escalator like a lord whisked into the lap
of your manor – credit immaculate, wallet stuffed to bursting, desire
for goods and services insatiable! Off you march down the gleaming
corridor, faux-marble flooring buffed to perfection, the glass
storefronts stretching out before you, pristine and rousing. There,
stepping for the first time into a state-of-the-art bazaar, poised to
buy, you are the modern shopper at your most galvanized, at your most
invigorated!
But as you peer into the first crystalline boutique, you find that it’s
– empty! An untenanted void! Well, this is a new complex, after all,
and one can hardly expect management to have leased every one of the
building’s nearly 200 units so quickly. No matter.
Undiscouraged, chin up, you march gamely onward, en route to the glory
of the second store. You step before the glass, survey the interior,
and see… more nothing. Store number two stands empty – once occupied
but hurriedly abandoned, it seems.
Christopher Katsarov for National Post
Now just what’s going on here? You step ahead to shops three and four.
They’re empty too — as are shops five, six and seven. Down the
glittering expanse of the ultra-modern mall hallway, as far as the eye
can see, there is nothing. Total vacancy. No havens of luxury goods, no
brand-name sanctums, no meccas for the cash-rich bon vivant.
Then another revelation: the storefronts are empty – and you’re the only person here.
The Shops at Aura sits like an unwelcome growth beneath the 79-storey
Aura condo tower on Yonge Street in Toronto. Aura was designed in the
inescapable “sculpted glass and stone” fashion by the architecture firm
Graziani + Corazza and erected by Canderel Residential just south of
College Street in 2012. It is, as Canderel trumpets on the condo’s
splash page, the tallest residential building in the country, and at
nearly 900 feet it’s Toronto’s fourth-tallest building, just a hair
behind the Scotia Plaza and the Trump International Hotel.
In a city already teeming with high-rises, a conurbation practically
inundated with the ostentatious, the Aura is at pains to be a
Ballardian citadel of grotesque proportions. “Graceful and commanding,”
Canderel’s marketing copy breathlessly intones, “Aura embodies the true
essence of luxury and sophistication… Aura is a world-class address.”
Indeed. And The Shops at Aura, that palatial underground shopping
retreat, was envisioned as nothing less than world-class too. Here is
how Canderel continues, years after opening its doors, to describe what
BlogTO has since deemed “Toronto’s worst mall”: “Welcome to The Shops
at Aura: A one-of-a-kind shopping centre in the heart of downtown
Toronto. The Shops at Aura boasts a wide collection of shops and
services to cater to design, fashion, beauty, computer/tech,
professional services, and much more, along with a food court with a
unique offering of delicious food and drink options. Stroll through The
Shops at Aura to uncover surprising finds from independent business
owners, many of whom provide distinct custom services and products
found nowhere else in Toronto.”
Certainly it’s true that this is a one-of-a-kind shopping centre. And
yes, there is much that may be found nowhere else in Toronto. For
instance, nowhere else will you find such desolation, such
hopelessness, such gloom. At no other mall in the city, perhaps at no
other mall in the world, will you find such an absence of people or
places to shop.
To stroll through the Shops at Aura today is to enter a world of
solitude and isolation. There is no bustle, no commotion or whirl;
there’s no sense of life or activity at all, save the dreary
peregrinations of the custodial staff, doubtless the only people on
site who can be sure of a regular paycheque. Corridors go untravelled
for hours at a time.
Christopher Katsarov for National Post
What businesses remain – what business cling to life in desperation,
unremittingly drawing on reserves of life savings and rainy-day funds –
go without customers, any customers at all, for days. This is Yonge
Street – thriving main artery of the city! The daily route of thousands
with disposable cash! But inside the mall: no one. It’s like one of
those old Twilight Zone episodes in which everyone else has suddenly
vanished from the face of the earth.
The complex was built to house 122 standalone retail units, most about
250 square feet, in simple glass and drywall. Of these units the Aura’s
online floor plan lists just over 50 as presently occupied – but many
of those, it becomes clear should one actually descend upon the Shops
in person, have since been ditched or hurriedly fled. Some bear signs
declaring overnight foreclosure: “rent owed,” “lease terminated,”
things like that. Others that seem to be in business – hand-written
sale signs in the window, reams of merchandise still on display – are
revealed on closer inspection to be locked and deserted, a “for lease”
notice posted to the door. The fortunate announce that they’ve moved to
a new location. The less so have given up hope and just want out: “2
years free rent!!!” is a poster you’ll see in many windows.
Still there are holdouts: a tenacious barber shop, a dry-cleaner that
must get some work from upstairs. And yet even the apparently
indefatigable show the hallmarks of defeat. “Back in five minutes”
signs abound. There are so many of them, on so many different
storefronts, and for such endless lengths of time, that any prospective
shopper who wanders in would think they’d arrived during a kind of
mall-wide siesta.
Some store-owners appear to be on semi-permanent holiday: “On an
errand,” reads a notice posted to the door of a custom t-shirt shop,
“please call my cell and I’ll be with you as soon as I can.” A photo
studio is closed Mondays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, but can be
visited between 12:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. the “rest” of the week. Both a
pet accessories store and a low-rent clothing boutique are open by
appointment only – though what volume of clientele these business book
per week is anyone’s guess.
Anyone who’s worked in retail can tell you how unbearable the boredom
of a slow day can be. On this scale, at this magnitude, I don’t think a
reasonable mind could endure it: the “errand” these shopkeepers must be
on is the retrieval of their sanity. But they have not taken their
despair lightly.
Earlier this year the mall’s tenants filed a lawsuit against Canderel
Residential for $31.6 million dollars. The business owners claim,
essentially, that they were deliberately misled: the Shops at Aura was
promised to be a world-class shopping destination, a riot of
cosmopolitan commerce, drawing residents of the condo above and their
neighbours along Yonge by the thousands every day.
Perhaps Canderel has no control over the clientele of its own mall, and
in any case, it would be no less in the developer’s interest for the
operation to be successful than the individual business owners
themselves. But Canderel further promised the proprietors that the
Shops at Aura would soon enough connect to the city’s PATH network – a
promise, however alluring, that it has so far been unable to keep.
Diabolical? Probably not. The usual collision of hubris and
incompetence seems more likely.
The Shops at Aura is not an isolated tragedy of doomed commercial
enterprise. It’s a microcosm of a trend accelerating across the
country: the condo boom, noxious and unrelenting, and forever destined
to disappoint.
Across Toronto and Vancouver deluxe high-rises loom imposingly,
half-empty and ready to rent; their balconies tumble to the ground,
their power fails en masse, their waterlines burst and their appliances
sputter. The Aura condo itself, that paragon of “luxury and
sophistication,” has been plagued by misfortune: its nine elevators
have broken down so frequently and for such lengths that the residents
took to the local media to express their indignation: “It’s a little
outrageous,” a tenant told the Toronto Star in August, after a rash of
technical problems paralyzed the elevator banks. “It’s just too big a
building. They haven’t accommodated.”
Ah, well, that’s typical: promise people glamour, erect a monument to
your opulent vision, and then count the money when the complaints begin
to roll in. Who needs excellence when the condo tower is a world-class
address? Who needs shops and customers when the mall is a dream?
Weary, overwhelmed, saddened, you emerge from the purgatorial Aura and
debouch to Yonge Street, glad to be returned once again to a crowd – to
life, to the city. You take a look at the block around you. There’s the
Big Slice pizzeria, with its block letters and peppermint swirl on a
red sign; the hand-written pick-up specials taped to the inside of the
window, the concrete doorstep in sullen disrepair. To its right are the
Doner Kebab House and the VIP Billiard Club, and something called Nouri
Extension – “We Do Cellphone Repair”, a paper sign taped to its window
advertises – where a wrestling-themed beach towel, faded from months in
the sun, hangs above the door bearing a price tag in felt tip (just
$4.99). There’s the Cash Money and the nail salon, the waffle house and
the Evergreen mission.
Yonge Street! As it’s meant to be.
But then you see it once again, the delusional positivity: the
jet-black Starbucks and the glittering fitness centre shooting up
through the cracks of the street like resplendent weeds. You blink and
look again at Yonge Street of yore: the Big Slice, the Doner Kebab
House, the VIP Billiard Club – all closed, shuttered, brown paper
plastered across the windows and doors.
Just what’s going on here? The block is set to be demolished. The
businesses have been forced to clear out. On that very corner, right
across from the Aura, a new condo is planned.
On a billboard advertising its future, an airbrushed vision of the
perfect condo soon to come, you spot a shopper just like you – credit
immaculate, wallet stuffed to bursting, desire for goods and services
insatiable.
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