The Morningside Mall was an enclosed shopping mall located in Scarborough, Ontario. It was demolished in 2007 to build Morningside Crossing.
History[]
The Morningside Mall opened in 1979 with the anchors of Dominion and Woolco. Other tenants included Bulk Barn, Tip Top Tailors, a public library, and a dentist office. The mall had three stories, the first two were mainly for retail, and the third floor was for office space. A food court was located on the second floor.
Throughout the 1980s, the mall succeeded as a community shopping mall with a mixture of local and national tenants, the mall also made many jobs for the neighborhood, both retail and commercial.
In the 1990s, the area saw a demographic change, this negatively impacted the mall and this made some vacancies within the mall. In 1994, the Woolco store in the mall was rebranded to Walmart Canada. Walmart became the main store that drew people into the mall, as it was the only Walmart in the area.
By the late 1990s, the mall started to look old and dark, it had not been renovated since its 1979 opening date.
In 2003, Walmart permanently closed its doors at the mall and moved closer to the 401 highway, which is a major highway in the Greater Toronto Area. To make things worse, Dominion also closed around this time, and a No Frills opened across the street, drawing even more customers away from the mall. These closures immediately made a large decline in the mall, and most national and local retailers closed.
In 2007, Morningside Mall permanently closed. By April of the same year, the mall began to be demolished, starting with the former Walmart space. By 2008, the mall was fully demolished. In its place, Morningside Crossing was built, which is a shopping plaza anchored by Food Basics. This plaza will most likely continue to operate for many years to come.
Gallery[]
