Midtown (formerly Midtown Plaza) is a

shopping mall A shopping mall (or simply mall) is a North American term for a large indoor shopping center, usually anchored by department stores. The term "mall" originally meant a pedestrian promenade with shops along it (that is, the term was used to refe ...

Saskatoon Saskatoon () is the largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Saskatchewan. It straddles a bend in the South Saskatchewan River in the central region of the province. It is located along the Trans-Canada Hig ...

Saskatchewan Saskatchewan ( ; ) is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Western Canada, western Canada, bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and on t ...

, Canada, located in the

Central Business District A central business district (CBD) is the commercial and business centre of a city. It contains commercial space and offices, and in larger cities will often be described as a financial district. Geographically, it often coincides with the "city ...

neighbourhood. The main anchor store is Hudson's Bay, with one vacant anchor last occupied by

Sears Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began a ...

and the shopping centre has a total store count of 154 stores. The mall was built on the former site of the city's

main railway station Central stations or central railway stations emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century as railway stations that had initially been built on the edge of city centres were enveloped by urban expansion and became an integral part of the ...

as part of a major inner city redevelopment project in the 1960s that also saw construction of a freeway, the Senator Sid Buckwold Bridge,

TCU Place TCU Place, formerly known as the Saskatoon Centennial Auditorium, is a convention and arts centre in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. Situated in the Central Business District it is located next to Midtown Plaza. The Saskatoon Centennial Audito ...

(formerly Centennial Auditorium) - an arts-convention complex - and a new facility for the city's

YMCA YMCA, sometimes regionally called the Y, is a worldwide youth organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, with more than 64 million beneficiaries in 120 countries. It was founded on 6 June 1844 by George Williams in London, originally ...

. The mall officially opened with 51 stores and services; as well as an extensive underground parking garage; on July 30, 1970. One of its anchor tenants, Simpsons-Sears (

Sears Canada Sears Canada Inc. was a publicly-traded Canadian company affiliated with the American-based Sears department store chain. In operation from 1952 until January 14, 2018, and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, the company began as Simpsons-Sears� ...

), opened for business in 1968, more than a year ahead of the rest of the mall, but closed January 2018.

Eaton's The T. Eaton Company Limited, later known as Eaton's, was a Canadian department store chain that was once the largest in the country. It was founded in 1869 in Toronto by Timothy Eaton, an immigrant from what is now Northern Ireland. Eaton's grew ...

was the mall's second anchor until that chain went out of business in the late 1990s; The Bay (later branded Hudson's Bay) subsequently relocated to the mall from its 2nd Avenue standalone location. From its opening until its late-1980s renovation, the mall had a corridor connecting directly to the auditorium, which was usually utilized as an exit from the facility; there was also a corridor connecting the auditorium to the mall's parking garage. One early tenant of the mall was Midtown Cinema, the city's first mall-based movie theatre; it later split into two cinemas to become Saskatoon's first "multiplex"; the theatre closed in the spring of 2000 and its space was used for temporary retail and other exhibitions before being reallocated to other stores and parking. Another "day one" retailer was a franchise of the

Dominion The term ''Dominion'' is used to refer to one of several self-governing nations of the British Empire. "Dominion status" was first accorded to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Newfoundland, South Africa, and the Irish Free State at the 1926 ...

grocery store chain, which operated in the mall until the chain pulled out of Saskatoon in the late 1980s; after a few years of short-term uses (including housing its popular Eaton's-sponsored Christmas lights display), the mall redeveloped the former Dominion store into a food court. The mall was originally one storey. By 1990, a second storey was added and the façade was altered to mimic the original 1900s railway station. This reconstruction cost . Soon after, Saskatoon's first (and, to date) only

Toys "R" Us Toys "R" Us is an American toy, clothing, and baby product retailer owned by Tru Kids (doing business as Tru Kids Brands) and various others. The company was founded in 1957; its first store was built in April 1948, with its headquarters loc ...

store opened on a standalone "big-box" location on the mall's southern parking lot; although not physically connected to the mall, it is considered part of the shopping centre. Also part of the Midtown complex is CN Towers – now "Midtown Tower" – an office block that was for most of the 1970s the tallest office building in Saskatoon. The 12-story tower is in height. From the early 1970s until the early 2000s, the fifth floor of the office block housed the studios of the local

CBC Television CBC Television (also known as CBC TV) is a Canadian English-language broadcast television network owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcaster. The network began operations on September 6, 1952. Its French-l ...

owned-and-operated station

CBKST CBKST, VHF analogue channel 11, was a CBC Television owned-and-operated station licensed to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, which operated from 1971 to 2012. The station was owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. CBKST's master contro ...

. A small "boutique" mall, Midtown Village, was developed in the late 1970s at the corner of 20th Street and Idylwyld Drive; initially a separate development from Midtown Plaza, it briefly came under the same ownership as the larger mall in the 1990s and was branded as part of Midtown Plaza for a time, before being demolished for additional parking. From 1993 to 2005, the mall owned and displayed

Gordie Howe Gordon Howe (March 31, 1928 – June 10, 2016) was a Canadian professional ice hockey player. From 1946 to 1980, he played 26 seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) and six seasons in the World Hockey Association (WHA); his first 25 seaso ...

statue at the southwest corner of 1st Avenue South and 20th Street East. It was relocated to the

SaskTel Centre SaskTel Centre (formerly Credit Union Centre, and originally Saskatchewan Place; informally also known as ''Sask Place'') is an arena located in the Agriplace Industrial Park, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. With 15,195 permanent stadium seats ...

in 2005. Following the closure of the

chain in winter of 2018, the mall began to redevelop the store's space into a new wing with a re-located food court, which opened on July 25, 2019. In November 2018, it was announced that the previous main-floor food court area would be redeveloped into an MEC, as its first location in the province. It was originally projected to open in May 2020, but was delayed to late-2021 due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

and other factors. The fate of the future store was also questioned in September 2020, when MEC announced that it would be privatized and sold to American investment firm Kingswood Capital Management. An H&M store opened in the mall in December 2020.

References

External links

*
Saskatoon Retail Survey
{{Shopping malls in Saskatoon Shopping malls in Saskatchewan Shopping malls established in 1968 Buildings and structures in Saskatoon Terminating vistas in Canada Tourist attractions in Saskatoon 1968 establishments in Saskatchewan

See also

References

External links