Leyda Molnaris managing a mall at the epicentre of cool, according to North American-wide retail survey that named Vancouver’s Main Street among the top 15 “cool streets” in North America.
Kingsgate Mall is just steps from Main Street and Broadway, which the Cushman & Wakefield report said is “ground zero” for the coolest shopping district in the province, and one of only two in Canada.
Cool streets are characterized as being “bohemian enclaves and focal points for local arts, music or the LGBT community”, the report notes, but also for “an explosion of unconventional new retail concepts.”
Molnar, who has managed Kingsgate Mall for 10 years, said she has seen the change in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood that the aging mall anchors. “We see a lot more young people because of all the new condos,” she said, adding that a new one-off, locally-owned fashion store, Lolli Pretty, has just opened and Home Highlights, a start-up interior design accessory outlet, opens this month.
The mall is nearly fully leased – there is only one space vacant and even it is booked half the time for community events, Molnar said. “They (the Mount Pleasant Neighbourhood House) are teaching Syrian refugee children.” Which is pretty cool.
The mall’s leasing success comes as no surprise to analysts.
“If retailers live and die by cool, the same also holds true of shopping centres and entire neighbourhoods,” said Garrick Brown, vice-president of retail research at Cushman & Wakefield. “And in an age of frugality, e-commerce encroachment and vast gaps in shopping centre performance, cool matters now more than ever.”
“Independent retailers remain the heart and soul of the cool street phenomenon,” Brown added. “Small chains, start-ups and little guys are those most thriving in those locations, and this is largely driven by rents, which stand at roughly 55% of the average asking rate of the nearest Class A mall or high street shopping district.”
Retail lease rates in the Main Street area range from $20 per square foot to $43 per square foot, compared to an average of $75 per square foot in downtown Vancouver.
Millennials make up 31% of the population of Mount Pleasant, which boasts an average family income is $85,689, Cushman & Wakefield stated.
According to the Cool Streets of North America report, the other 14 coolest shopping districts are Sunset Park in Brooklyn; Logan Square in Chicago; Over-the-Rhine in Cincinnati; RiNo in Denver; Silver Lake in Los Angeles; Wynwood in Miami; North Loop in Minneapolis; Roosevelt Row in Phoenix; Carytown in Richmond, Va.; East Village in San Diego; Jackson Square in San Francisco; Delmar Loop in St. Louis; West Queen West in Toronto; and Shaw in Washington, D.C.
