In praise of the lowly strip mall

In praise of the lowly strip mall

DAVE LEBLANC

Actor Mike Myers once described his Scarborough birthplace as having either a doughnut shop or a factory carpet outlet on every corner. Provided they were part of a strip mall, he was probably right.


On a recent drive along Lawrence Avenue from Markham Road to Victoria Park Avenue, I found almost every intersection had at least one, if not two or three strip malls.

An architectural pariah for decades, urban-design critics usually attribute suburbia's ills to the humble strip mall. Not only are they rundown and ugly, they say, their vast asphalt moats swallow pedestrians alive while encouraging an unhealthy dependence on the automobile. Worst of all, the low-rent businesses don't contribute enough in property taxes.

In essence, critics say, the strip mall should be ashamed of itself.

But I'll bet that doesn't bother new homeowners on Mike Myers Drive near Lawrence and Kennedy Road one iota.

Lack of design panache at local strip malls will be the last thing on people's minds. The malls offer far greater choice than the homogeneous indoor versions -- everything from tailors, hair stylists, Jamaican roti places, houses of worship, bakeries, Asian groceries, drug stores, dollar stores (our modern-day "five and dimes"), travel agents and a few bowling alleys.

Even with peeling paint and dated façades, these are bustling, thriving places. And isn't there a certain beauty in an architectural form doing exactly what it was designed to do?

Apparently not, since calls for the "beautification" of Scarborough's retail strip plazas appear with alarming regularity in mainstream media or via grassroots organizations such as SEAM (Scarborough Eglinton Avenue Modernization project). They claim that the key to rejuvenation is to make them less accessible to cars and more accessible to people. A sheltering canopy of foliage should line the outer edges of thoroughfares so that, until such time as the storefronts are modernized, the malls are less offensive to the eyes.

A noble gesture, perhaps, but it'll sound the death-knell for the hundreds of small businesses that depend on mobile customers who want speedy, in-and-out access. You can kiss goodbye the variety made possible by the reasonable rent, too. When leases go up, "mom and pops" and ethnic startups go away, says Randal O'Toole, senior economist of the Thoreau Institute and author of the essay "In Defense of Strip Developments."

"Aesthetics?" asks Mr. O'Toole. "They're nice [but]they're not the highest priority that a typical suburbanite has in choosing the location they're living in. If you look at the cities in the United States that are adopting design codes [for retailers]and smart-growth planning -- they're the least affordable. What's the most smart-growth city in Canada? A lot of people would argue it's Vancouver, but [they]have the least affordable housing market by far."

Besides, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I find the visual hodgepodge of strip malls a delight. There's the jumble of signage rendered in a dozen languages, and the elegance of quick post-and-beam construction speaks of the post-war era. ("Let's get this puppy up, Bob, and nothin' fancy 'cause all these new mommies gotta get their pablum somewhere!") Flourishes that the designers did include after all -- like some glazed brick here and a tile mosaic there -- provide a study in frugal ornamentation.

Like the little plaza on Brimley Road, south of Lawrence, with its tapering baby-blue fins on the window wall: For owners of townhouses currently under construction across the road, the Greek social club, Filipino variety and video rental store, sports bar and tiny eight-lane, five-pin Comet Lanes (in business since 1961) will become part of their lives.

Alley owner Eric Gutteridge, 39, bowled there as a kid and knew the original owner. Home of 17 leagues, it's a successful business that depends on both automobile and foot traffic. One of his regulars, a 92-year-old who passed away recently, would "walk here from Warden and Lawrence," he exclaims. "Come rain or shine . . . all the way along Lawrence, over that big hump between Kennedy and Midland."

Nasr Foods, at Lawrence and Warden, shows how successful some of these "lower rent" businesses can become. Starting with a 1,200-square-foot section in 1975, the specialized Mediterranean and Middle Eastern supermarket is now ten times its original size and has engulfed the rest of the mall. Partners Henry and Keysar Nasr know that success comes not from aesthetics but from offering a unique product at a good location.

"We have customers that drive from Kitchener, Hamilton, Mississauga, Belleville and, in the summertime, as far as Sudbury," Henry says. "It's not just the neighbourhood; we rely on the driving customers."

I wonder how many ask Mr. Nasr for more trees in the parking lot?

30 year old strip mall being demolished and surprisingly, people care

Lloyd Alter (@lloydalter)
Design / Urban Design
April 12, 2016

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Screen capture Google Street View/ View from corner

In the UK there is the Rubble Club, "open to all who have had buildings destroyed in their lifetime." Its founder said “I’m a great believer that buildings should be reused as much as possible, the public are entitled to live in a somewhat stable visual environment.” I used to practice as an architect and have over the years seen many of my buildings renovated beyond recognition, but the first of the new buildings I designed is about to come down. I was initially relieved, happy to join the Rubble Club, Toronto Branch; I thought it a horribly ugly thing. But at the time, I was trying to do something innovative and different.

Back in the 80s, a lot of developers wanted to do two level retail, usually a typology where neither level gets much visibility at all; in fact most were awful. Fortunately it has been killed off by universal accessibility requirements, but at the time it was a big deal.

This building was a study in how you could do it and make it actually work; every stair run was calculated, every angle of the glass was designed to bring it as close to the sidewalk as possible while maintaining open stairs to the lower level. It was further complicated by the slope of the site, so every storefront was at a different level.

Google Street View/ Mess of stairs/Screen capture

The problems arise when you care more about the mathematics and sight lines than the aesthetics – it was not what you would call beautiful. In fact, in the study that was done for the city as required for rezoning, ERA architects noted that “2369 Yonge Street does not exhibit any unique design or physical value and is not representative of a particular design style. Nor does it have any significant historical or associative value.” (Thanks, guys!)

When I first read in BlogTO, Toronto blog that it was coming down, I was quite relieved, given that I thought it quite ugly and embarrassing. However I soon got a real lesson, as people started commenting on Facebook about it. How it was the only place in the area where they could get a cheap Korean meal, a “Perfectly good retail strip plaza, that used to be filled with the types of businesses that a liveable neighborhood needs, obliterated to build yet another condo that's completely unsuitable for where it's going to be built.”

Or “That is a great building with historical and associative value. I am certain they will redo it as a flat maximized storefront without any differentiation. Those new stores will be without character and you will walk by without ever seeing what is sold there or noticing the store.”

Or “The sad thing is that the new buildings will never support they same level of small-shop retail density. Your design had so many narrow storefronts!“

Google Street View/Screen capture

It was significant enough a loss that Joshua Errett of CBC News contacted me for an interview. He grew up in the area and writes (autobiographically, according to what he told me):

High school students from nearby North Toronto Collegiate Institute used to frequent a video game store in the plaza, Gamerama, to play free video games in the 1990s and into the 2000s. A sports bar held a space on the top floor in recent years, becoming a place to UFC matches. And in recent years, Korean Cowboy earned a following for its fusion-style tacos.

"After saying I'm not sorry to see it go, I can see that buildings like this have a real role to play in the city," said Alter.

I have written before that when the condos come in, the city becomes a corporate monoculture of big banks, big drug stores and big food chains, and there is no room for the little jeweller and Korean Tacos joint and used game store like this mall had. But I had no idea how people would reach out to say how much they would miss them all.

Jane Jacobs wrote in the Death and Life of Great American Cities:

There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served.

Perhaps I should be proud of my ugly, disorderly two level strip mall. It evidently met a real need. As the CBC article concluded:

"You're not going to open up a record shop, tattoo parlour or video game store in one of these big fancy condos," Alter said