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Bedford Place (Formerly Bedford Place Mall) is a enclosed shopping mall in Bedford, NS, which is a suburb of Halifax, NS. Its current anchors are Giant Tiger and Peavey Mart.
History[]
By the time Bedford Place opened, the Halifax suburb of Bedford already had the Sunnyside Mall, yet they decided that one wasn't enough for Bedford. Bedford Place was built directly across the street from Sunnyside Mall. To build the mall, the Sackville River which runs right in front of the mall had to be made smaller to facilitate the construction of the parking lot. In later years, this became a major issue.
Bedford Place's original anchors were Towers and Dominion. The mall had many national retailers such as Suzy Shier, Reitmans, and Ardene. Bedford Place quickly became the dominant mall in the Bedford area as Sunnyside Mall was lacking behind. Throughout the 1980s, there were some store changes, Dominion became IGA in 1985, and stores inside the mall were also changing.
In June of 1991, HBC bought the Towers chain. Almost all of the Towers locations became Zellers, but since there already was one at Sunnyside Mall, a Hudson's Bay was opened in the Towers space instead. This was the only location that was turned into Hudson's Bay.
Also during this time, Sunnyside Mall had a major renovation to the mall which made the mall more competitive against the 1970s era Bedford Place.
In early 1996, Hudson's Bay closed at Bedford Place, soon after, it was replaced by Zellers, the Sunnyside Mall location was replaced with a Mark's, Pete's Fine Foods, and other smaller restaurants and retailers. When Zellers moved in, a complete renovation commenced so they could remain more competitive against Sunnyside Mall. Also during this time, an Atlantic Superstore was built in the parking lot of Bedford Place.
In 1999, the IGA location at Bedford Place closed, it was later replaced with Winners.
In 2010, the Shoppers Drug Mart closed at Bedford Place and moved to Sunnyside Mall. It sat vacant until 2013. Around this time, Winners relocated to Bedford Commons (now Winners/HomeSense).
In March 2013, the Zellers at Bedford Place began the transformation to Target Canada. Bedford Place underwent a renovation to complement the new anchor. The former Shoppers Drug Mart was turned into a food court, and the current food court at the mall closed. The former Winners space was turned into Rona. On September 17th, 2013, Target Canada opened its new location at Bedford Place.
The new food court that they spent lots of money on never actually got used. To this day, it has never had a food stall in it, currently, one of the stalls was turned into a Supplement King. In contrast, the old food court by the main entrance had places like Tim Hortons, McDonald's, and Orange Julius which were very popular.
The Decline of Bedford Place[]
On April 12th, 2015, Target Canada permanently closed at Bedford Place. This was after Target announced they would be leaving the Canadian market after it lost them millions of dollars. After the closure of Target Canada, Bedford Place had a very sharp decline of foot traffic, as they had just lost their largest anchor. Very quickly, most national retailers ether closed or moved to Sunnyside Mall across the street. This includes Tim Hortons, Ardene, Bluenotes, The Source, Susy Shier, Tanjay, and more. Local tenants and businesses also suffered too, throughout the next few years, more and more stores closed in the mall, Bedford Place is now down to just 16 open retailers within the mall.
In 2017, Giant Tiger opened in a part of the former Target Canada space. This had almost no effect on the rest of the mall, and stores continued to close. Around this time, Bedford Place Mall was renamed to Bedford Place. Although the signage wasn't updated until 2021.
In February of 2020, Rona closed their location at Bedford Place. Losing yet another anchor tenant made the mall even worse off then it already was.
In 2022, a Peavey Mart opened in the former Rona space. This was the first Peavey Mart in Atlantic Canada. Although something good happened for the mall, long time tenant Fabricville closed their store at Bedford Place, which left one of the larger tenants of Bedford Place empty.
2023 Bedford flood[]
In summer of 2023, extremely heavy rainfall occurred in Bedford. This caused a wastewater treatment facility to flood and make things worse, the Sackville River which was next to Bedford Place overflowed and completely flooded the mall. The mall had to be closed many weeks to facilitate the restoration of Bedford Place, not to mention all of the houses in the area that got flooded and destroyed. The mall eventually re-opened. But some stores decided to completely leave the mall after this event. Some stores like Dollarama were indefinitely closed until further notice. If the Sackville River wasn't shortened to build Bedford Place, then the flooding would of been much less severe.
Who knows how much longer Bedford Place will continue to operate. Stores like Giant Tiger and Peavey Mart continue to operate, but inside, the mall is almost completely empty.
Gallery[]
Photos[]
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See Also[]
- Target Canada - Former anchor of the mall
- Sunnyside Mall - Main competitor