Lincoln Fields Shopping Centre
Lincoln Fields Shopping Centre (formerly Lincoln Heights Galleria) was a community mall located in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It was located between Carling Avenue and Richmond Road, just west of the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway in the west-end Lincoln Heights neighbourhood. In October 2019, the mall was demolished due to changing demographics in the area and departure of the Ottawa west Walmart store in 2017.[1][2][3] It is close to the Lincoln Fields transit station. It is also served directly by OC Transpo bus routes 11, 16, 57, 85 & 153. The mall features Metro Inc formerly a Loeb, Moores and other stores.
Location | Ottawa, Ontario, Canada |
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Coordinates | 45°21′54″N 75°47′11″W |
Address | 2525 Carling Avenue |
Opening date | May 24, 1972 |
Closing date | July 31, 2019 |
No. of stores and services | 30+ |
No. of anchor tenants | 1 (Metro Inc) |
No. of floors | 2 |
Parking | 1000+ spaces |
Public transit access | OC Transpo Routes 11, 16, 52, 57, 85, 97 (July 2019) |
History
The mall was built in 1972. At the time it was hailed as the city's "third enclosed shopping centre.” Notably, the mall originally consisted of a Woolco – with a 160-seat Red Grille Restaurant inside (which would later become a Walmart), as well as a 160-seat McDonald's, a Loblaws (until 1986), an Ogilvy's department store (until 1992), Tamblyn Drugs (which then became Pharma Plus in 1989 and was a Rexall Drugstore from 2015), a pizza shop (later Pizza Pizza, now located in the mall's parking lot), Hemsley's (replaced by Jewellery Encounter in1998), Magoo's Ice Cream Parlor (known for providing one of Kevin O'Leary's earliest jobs, from which he was fired in 1973), Peter's Health Foods, Sam the Record Man (which then became Legend Records in 1986 and moved in 2016), Parker Clean, a restaurant, circa the late-1980s, called Buffalo Charlie's (which became Buster's Bar & Grill in 2009), Swiss Pastries, Candy Corner, Shop-Rite (Canada), which later became Moores in the 1990s, Nelms Opticians (which became Vezina Opticians in 1998), Toronto-Dominion Bank (also known as TD Canada Trust), Jean Junction (until the early 1980s), Bretton's, Canterbury House Bookstore, Consumers Distributing (later Subway), Koyman's Art Gallery, a shoe store, and other stores. Notably, beginning in 1988, A Buck or Two store began operations in the corner of the mall adjacent to the former Shop-Rite and later became a Dollar Tree store in the early 2010s, before closing in early 2019. The mall's main salon, Tweezers Unisex Hair Design, opened in the mall in 1985 and remained until the end of November 2019. Another notable, later addition to the mall was P.A.M.'s Coffee & Tea franchise in 2003, which remained until the end of July 2019. When the mall opened, it was originally supposed to include two movie theatres, but this never came to fruition.
The mall was formerly home to Woolco which became a Walmart in 1994.[4] In 2016, the Walmart store closed and relocated to Bayshore Shopping Centre.[5]
The mall was rebranded as a Lincoln Heights Galleria in 1985.
In November 2018, the Wendy's restaurant, housed in a separate building fronting Carling Avenue, burned down in a fire that police said was deliberately set.[6]
In January 2019, it was announced the mall would be demolished and that leases would terminate on July 31st of that year. A new Metro grocery store is slated to be built on the north-east side of the lot, and a new two-storey building to house the remaining retailers. Long-term development plans include high-density residential towers on the site.[6][7]
Moore's clothing store moved to a location near the Coliseum Theatre in Britannia.
The mall officially closed in August 2019.[8] As of February 2020, the mall is closed except for the Metro grocery store and the Rexall pharmacy. The mall will be demolished in sections in the near future.
References
- "Walmart arrives at Bayshore Shopping Centre — and leaves Lincoln Fields behind". CBC News. Retrieved 13 June 2016.
- "Ottawa police investigate shots fired near Lincoln Fields mall". CBC News Ottawa. Retrieved 13 June 2016.
- "Annual 'Touch a Truck' takes over Lincoln Fields June 1". Ottawa Citizen. Retrieved 13 June 2016.
- McCooey, Paula. "Lincoln Fields tenants worried Walmart exit will eat into bottom line". Ottawa Citizen. Retrieved 13 June 2016.
- McCooey, Paula. "Lincoln Fields losing Walmart to newly-renovated Bayshore Shopping Centre". Ottawa Citizen. Retrieved 13 June 2016.
- Vito Pilieci (25 January 2019). "First site plans for Lincoln Fields Shopping Centre revealed | Ottawa Citizen". Ottawa Citizen. Retrieved 7 May 2019.
- Kate Porter (January 26, 2019). "Lincoln Fields owner moves to demolish aging mall". CBC News. Retrieved 7 May 2019.
- https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-lincoln-fields-shopping-centre-closure-1.5234070