Reflections Of An Urban Mallrat

The Saturday Huddle is a weekly column that features opinion, analysis, and reflections on Huddle stories, podcasts, and business news in the region. Mark Leger is the Director of News Content for Acadia Broadcasting and Huddle.

I was a stay-at-home dad for a few years when my kids were very young. I loved it but there were times when I craved the company of other adults.

I would often pack the kids into their double stroller and wheel them down the street to Saint John City Market; the cleaning staff would always smile and stop to chat with me and my kids while we ate lunch in the eating area.

Then we’d meander through the pedway system that connects the City Market to the Brunswick Square shopping mall, the Canada Games Aquatic Centre and the Market Square complex that houses the library, and back then the New Brunswick Museum.

Often, I’d park the stroller at the Starbucks on the main thoroughfare in Brunswick Square and have a coffee. The kids would be entertained by people-watching or flipping through books they’d taken out of the library, bribed with a Tim Hortons donut from down the hall. That would buy me the adult interaction I craved, as people I knew from around town would stop for a chat.

I’ve never thought of myself as a mall guy. I’m an urban dweller who, for decades, has yearned for the regeneration of our city centre’s street-level storefronts, lamenting the growth of the box stores and malls that are a major feature of suburbanization and car culture.

Back then, I only grudgingly came to the realization that the pedway system had become the city centre’s true main street — not King Street just outside the mall’s doors. It had mostly empty storefronts and very little traffic, while the mall inside was bustling with people heading to and from work, popping in for coffees or shopping in relatively busy stores.

Not long after, two things happened that turned the tide.

In 2015, Slate Office Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) bought Brunswick Square, along with 13 other office and retail buildings in Atlantic Canada, from Fortis Properties. In subsequent years, most retail stores, coffee shops, and food stalls and restaurants have closed, their spaces going unfilled.

Pizza Hut, the anchor food establishment in the food hall area on the ground floor, is the latest business to leave. It announced earlier this week that it would close its Brunswick Square restaurant and open a take-out and delivery location on Rothesay Avenue.

Related: Brunswick Square Vacancies A ‘Blemish’ For Saint John 

Around the same time Slate took over Brunswick Square, the surrounding streets began to experience a resurgence. New cafes, restaurants, and retail shops opened on King, Canterbury, Germain, Prince William, Princess, and Water Streets.

When the mall was bustling and pedway the city centre’s de facto main street, people like me assumed it was a zero-sum game; that the street-level businesses on the uptown heritage streets could not survive because the mall was so busy. That’s why it was so hard for me to admit that I had become an uptown mallrat myself.

I don’t think what’s happening right now is the same kind of zero-sum game; that the mall is failing because the street-level businesses are thriving. This is a problem entirely of Slate’s making. To use often cited clichés of the business world, the pie is bigger, not just sliced up differently; rising tides should be lifting all boats.

Businesses are certainly still hurting because of the pandemic and many people working remotely have yet to return to city-centre offices across the region. But the decade-long trend toward repopulating our cores continues as developers build new apartment buildings and renovate old ones to accommodate the people who now want to live there.

I know they still have debts to pay and must live with the fear of possible future lockdowns and restrictions, but restaurants and bars in my area are very busy again, and the streets are livelier.

In this environment of renewed optimism, the ongoing emptying of Brunswick Square is indeed a “blemish.” It’s not the only one, mind you. The museum recently started to pack up and move from Market Square. The Fundy Quay site is cleared of buildings and fenced off as it goes through site preparations for future construction of public spaces and commercial and residential developments. The site of the former Woolworth’s building at the top of King Street is a big hole surrounded by security fencing.

But the community believes new housing and businesses will ultimately be built on these sites and there’s optimism about the increased vibrancy and growth that will come with those developments.

I don’t know of anyone who has any hope that Brunswick Square can be reinvigorated under the current ownership.

Former mayor Don Darling says the city tried to work with the company on the vacancy issue a few years ago. But discussions went nowhere, and the mall continued to deteriorate and be a source of embarrassment for the community.

“Right now, Brunswick Square … is a blemish on Saint John and I think the doors should be locked,” says Darling, who raged about Slate’s inaction on Twitter after he learned of Pizza Hut’s departure.

“I think it’s an embarrassment to have cruise ship tours walk through Brunswick Square. It’s a black eye on the city and the owners Slate Office REIT appear not to care at all about that building.”

And that’s what is so frustrating about the situation. In the days when I used to take the kids there, I’d watch the cruise ship passengers mix with locals – shopping and having coffee and enjoying the hustle and bustle of the mall along with the rest of us. After the sale went through and the mall started to empty, I started to overhear tourists comment on all the empty storefronts and what that must mean about the state of the local economy.

The problem isn’t the city-centre economy. The problem is the mall and it can only be fixed by Slate.