|
So, the project has started a little slowly, but I managed to get a copy of a facts & figures booklet for the mall at the Library. Produced in 1988 it has a number of interesting facts that I wasn’t aware of:
- The mall covers a piece of property equivalent to 24 city blocks or over 49 hectares (121 acres), is over a mile long, and with its two floors has a floor area of approximately 480,000 square metres or five million square feet. To put this into a little perspective (at least for me), I worked on the Calgary Courts Centre: which is 1 million square feet over 44 stories). The sheer volume and area of WEM has set the scale of development in that area: block sizes are huge, streets are incredibly wide, and buildings (which are mostly single-family, small apartments and other big-box type stores) are built at a very low-density. This is an area where walking to and from spaces is like imaging yourself in Le Corbusier’s Radiant City - sure, Le Corbusier thought about walking, by building sidewalks and speaking to ‘open space and greenery’ but as a pedestrian the large open spaces are inaccessible.
- the mall was built in three phases over a period of 4 years. In each phase the mall doubled it’s size, adding more stores, but also recreation and entertainment in the last 2 phases. This explains the mish-mash form of the mall, which does in all aerials (and when walking through) appear to be a succession of buildings and spaces that do not immediately relate to each other. Development began in the east section of the mall, at 170 street, and spread west to 178 street over that 4 year period. I’m going to look for aerials from that time period, but I’m guessing this was an edge condition in the city. Beyond 178 street was probably mostly small housing developments, and not the built-fabric we see today at all (more to come). The diversity in the mall’s built-form reflects the disjunction between the different time periods of development, and is not unlike the city itself where all parts do not necessarily meet at clean edges or appear to be a congruous blanket that has the same development type. The city’s chaos is what is interesting to me, and where those moments of conflict between the different parts come together. In google earth it appears to be a giant mass (the city and the mall), but in reality, it’s rises and falls are reflective of the movement in time.
- In 1988 there were 18 malls in the city (not counting St. Albert), today I count 10. The building of WEM had a significant effect on where people in the city were spending their free shopping time - was it the draw of the large mall? I’m going to say yes - but! In the last 5 years or so (going by what I recall in shopping mall history in the city), many of the malls that managed to survive this last 22 years are starting another round of revitalization. Southgate has completely redefined its image, drawing more ‘upscale’ clientele to a different range of stores. Southgate is smaller, and has better and newer facilities (washrooms, decor, public spaces) in comparison to WEM. Downtown has also revitalized itself, adding new stores to draw people and attempting to update some of its own facilities. Both are accessible by the LRT, which makes it more accessible to teenagers, hipsters (who typically do not own vehicles) and seniors. WEM has a major transit centre, but is mainly only accessible by bus and private vehicle.
- West Edmonton Mall seems to be one of the last major public building projects in the city. Since then, the activity of ‘shopping’ has been centered on more fringe projects - mostly South Edmonton Common, which is a collection of big-boxed stores spread over an area about equivalent to the area of WEM.
I think there’s some very interesting comparisons to make about time and relative size with other development in the city. This will come.
I think my first task is to start photographing. I want to see what’s happening at the mall, and where this study can take me.
Sources:
The Architectural Monolith of Edmonton
City of Edmonton, Department of Planning and Development. West Edmonton Mall Facts and Figures, August, 1988.
|
