Leyda Molnar is managing a mall at the epicentre of cool, according to a 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.
“We see a lot more young people because of all the new condos.”
Molnar added that a new one-off, locally owned fashion store, Lolli Pretty, has just opened and Home Highlights, a startup interior design accessory outlet, opens this month. The mall is nearly fully leased. It has only one space vacant and Molnar said even that’s booked half the time for community events.
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, startups 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.”
Per-square-foot retail lease rates in the Main Street area range from $20 to $43 compared with an average of $75 in downtown Vancouver.
Other coolest shopping districts in the Cool Streets of North America report were Sunset Park in Brooklyn, Logan Square in Chicago, Over-the-Rhine in Cincinnati, RiNo in Denver and Silver Lake in Los Angeles.
