Vaughan Mills Mall: Shopping Mecca or Urban Blight?

Posted on August 30, 2008 at 9:30 am by Shawn Smith

vaughanmills1 Vaughan Mills, located north of Toronto at Highway 400 and Rutherford Road, is a shopping and entertainment complex of colossal proportions. With almost 1.2 million square feet (110,000 m²) of retail space, all on a single floor, it is the 13th largest mall in Canada and 6th largest in the GTA.[1] The big purple mall sign alongside highway 400 is a beacon for the countless mall-bound shoppers, and I too have journeyed to the oversized stores at Vaughan Mills in search of shopping glory. It has the world’s largest Tommy Hilfiger store, the largest Toys “R” Us in Canada, and of course, Bass Pro, an outdoor enthusiast’s one-stop shop.The mall first opened in 2004 and has been deemed a rousing success.It welcomed its two millionth visitor less than two months after its opening.[2]However, some shudder in disbelief at the short-sightedness of building this icon of urban sprawl.

Vaughan Mills was the first major shopping complex in the Greater Toronto Area since the Erin Mills Town Centre opened in 1990 [3]. The mall, located next to Canada’s Wonderland, attracts big crowds. Here, perhaps, is a grand opportunity for a New Mobility hub; one that connects various modes of transportation like walking, cycling, and transit. It has yet to achieve this, but hopefully it will evolve.

6,300 parking spaces surround the perimeter of the mall, like a Castle Grayskull with its surrounding impenetrable moat. The City of Vaughan is embarking on Vision 2020 [4], their plan to manage growth in a more sustainable way. Will they ever consider parking reforms? In the land of big-box stores, it seems like a far-fetched notion.

vaughanmills air photo

Photo taken from Microsoft Virtual Earth

Vaughan Mills features a York Region Transit Terminal with bus connections to #12 Pine Valley, #85 Rutherford/16th Avenue, #20 Jane-Concord, and #360 Maple Express.  However, most shoppers couldn’t tell you where the bus terminal is (near the northeast part of the shopping centre in Rural Neighbourhood #3). Unlike Yorkdale or even Square One, there is no rapid transit, and no GO Transit service. It is served by only local transit routes with low ridership. Just about the only people taking the bus to Vaughan Mills are those who don’t have access to a car.  But there is hope. Viva York has experienced significant growth each year since it’s launch in 2005, proving that transit can be successful in York Region and that it is possible to change people’s driving behaviours.

vaughan mills view4
Photo taken from Microsoft Virtual Earth

Getting to the mall on foot is not an easy feat. The huge expanse of asphalt means one has to travel great distances. I recall one time last winter when I tried to walk there from the Canadian Tire on Rutherford Road across the street. The sidewalks soon became inaccessible under the snowbanks, and as I scrambled on a busy street with cars streaming by me, and then crossed the ring road and parking lot, I wondered why a project of this magnitude was planned in a way that makes pedestrians feel like captives in their own city.

Vaughan Mills is a much-trumpeted symbol of Vaughan. Ironically, though, the shopping convenience comes at the price of the traffic chaos that ensues every day on Rutherford Road. The bottom line is that Vaughan Mills makes driving a car almost irresistible, even a physical necessity, compared to walking, cycling, or taking transit. Can we do better?

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7 Comments

  1. I have had the opportunity to travel to this shopping centre via bike. Somehow I get the feeling this makes me unique among humanity.

    It features some of the worst design in almost every aspect, even when going at it in a car-centric manner. The plaza’s that are to the north are easily the most bland and human unfriendly I have encountered in the GTA, and that’s no light criticism.

    It’s another example where designers failed to create any sense of place whatsoever. It’s just not an appealing place to be.

    But it suits Vaughan, because this is also the worst planned municipality in the GTA. It has worse traffic than anywhere south of Steeles.

    GravatarComment by Triceratops — August 30, 2008 @ 12:27 pm

  2. I think that scale is part of the fumble of this project. Along the east-west axis, the length is roughly equivalent to distance between subway stops along Bloor. That’s large for a single location.

    Second is parking. It should be:

    Option 1. Inverted from its current layout, as in the building is adjacent to the road and then inside the circle of buildings is the parking, preferably with a bus loop between the buildings and parking. You could possibly have multiple bus stops within the loop, and I’d even recommend it considering the scale. Even better would be if there are lots of patios and eateries with a landscaped mix of indoor and outdoor dining areas surrounding the bus loop creating lots of pedestrian and social activity all around the loop, creating an inviting atmosphere. This would give transit an advantage over the car. On the street access side, it could be tailored to pedestrian access and provide lots of bicycle parking for cycling access.

    Option 2. Put the parking underground on an upper level above the mall and bring the structure out to the street face as above. Provide a bus terminal on the pedestrian level in the center of the mall, accessed by a bus-only roadway cutting through part of the mall and part of the parking (the hill-like roadway allows neither the parking area nor the ground floor to be bisected by the busway), and have it serviced by Barrie GO buses as well.

    I put a lot of emphasis in both on the central location of the bus terminal, because putting it on the northeast corner like above is absurd. That is not a solution because it does not provide convenient access to, well, anybody not using the 10 stores closest to the bus terminal. The access to it in winter must also be horrible in its current state, but the two options above can give transit users sheltered access right up to the bus.

    In its current state, I don’t see how this could ever become a mobility hub in any form. The design is a failure. If this is to become any mobility hub, the whole thing would have to be redesigned.

    GravatarComment by Karl Junkin — August 30, 2008 @ 1:41 pm

  3. Went to Wonderland to drop off and later pick up my son. I am disappointed with the whole Vaughan shopping area surrounding Wonderland.

    Just about everything is single story, single use buildings with either asphalt parking between the buildings and the road, or the back of the store’s building against the road.

    Bus stops, they’re someplace but are hard to find. Why do they use bus stop signs the size of parking signs? They seem to be an afterthought.

    With forecasts that Hurricane Gustov (http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/) could reaching category 4 and gasoline prices shooting past $1.50/litre, building such shopping centres is NOT what is needed for Vaughan or anywhere in the 905 area.

    GravatarComment by W. K. Lis — August 30, 2008 @ 3:02 pm

  4. Karl Junkin is a real Jerkin

    GravatarComment by Paul — September 1, 2008 @ 9:24 pm

  5. Paul, please refrain from personal attacks in the comments. Thank you.

    GravatarComment by Mark Kuznicki — September 2, 2008 @ 12:06 am

  6. Land here is cheap and not as valued as downtown. This means there is less incentive to build a more expensive multi-story building/parking lot on a fraction of the land than the end result of spreading out on a single level. We need some policies in place to change this.
    Triceratops, I really like your parking and transit suggestions.

    GravatarComment by Shawn Smith — September 2, 2008 @ 7:59 am

  7. Mark, based on Shawn’s comment, I think we may need stronger colour contrast on the comment boxes vs. the background colour :P

    GravatarComment by Karl Junkin — September 3, 2008 @ 1:01 pm

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