Edmonton’s first shopping centre is going back to the future. First Capital Real Estate Investment Trust unveiled plans on Thursday to redevelop the middle section of Westmount Centre, converting the mall into an outdoor-access retail complex. The mall, the city’s first, opened in August 1955 as the outdoor Westmount Shoppers Park, with 40 stores and 3,000 parking spaces. The shopping centre was extensively remodelled, enclosed and expanded 11 years later. The mall was further renovated and made larger in the mid 1980s and late 1990s, with retailers such as Home Depot and Walmart moving to the mall in the 2000s. Walmart moved to Kingsway Mall four years ago. Freestanding stores in the mall’s parking lot were also added over time. Work over the next 18-24 months to transform the site will include adding new retail spaces, pedestrian connections, landscaping and facade, expanding the west parking lot, and creating exterior access for all retailers, said Jennifer Arezes, First Capital REIT’s head of development and construction. “We are really taking the centre of the mall and turning it inside out, creating a dual-facing shopping center that will be open,” Arezes told CTV News Edmonton, adding work on the project will begin next month. Anchor tenants connected to the mall such as Safeway, Home Depot, Shoppers Drug Mart and Scotiabank will remain open during construction. The mall’s former Dollarama store recently relocated north of 114 Avenue to a space formerly used by a Rexall drug store. The section of the mall that includes a former movie theatre space on the second floor will be torn down as part of the redevelopment, Azeres said. Erin Rutherford, the city councillor for the ward that includes the shopping centre, said the revitalization of Westmount is significant considering the surrounding neighbourhoods are some of Edmonton’s most-densely populated ones outside the city core. She said having an improved shopping area should help make the overall community more vibrant by better connecting the nearby public amenities such as the transit centre beside the mall, the Telus World of Science, the new Coronation Rec Centre and Ross Sheppard High School to residential areas. “I think it’s going to be a real win,” Rutherford told CTV News Edmonton on Friday. “I think it’s smart. They’ve obviously studied the business model about what kind of services people are looking for, and I think that quick, in-and-out students coming in wanting to get something quick at lunch, people coming out of the recreation centre wanting to grab a quick bite on their way home, I think they’ve nailed it.” The 1955 $5-million Westmount shopping development ($58.5 million in 2026 dollars) was billed as one of Canada’s largest shopping centres and took up 30 acres, or six city blocks, between 133 and 135 streets and 111 and 114 avenues. Prominent local architect Peter Hemingway, who later designed the nearby pool that now bears his name as part of the rec centre, devised the mall’s 1966 indoor conversion. Similar such projects that saw former indoor Edmonton malls converted into an outdoor-access retail centre include the ex-Capilano Mall, the east-end shopping complex that was converted a dozen years ago into what’s now known as SmartCentres Edmonton East, and Centennial Mall, which was transformed into the west-end’s Mayfield Common in the early 1990s. With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Jeremy Thompson
