Retail Through the Ages: Dufferin Mall

Max Mosher on the midtown mall's makeover. Really.

 

Back when I was a kid, Yorkdale and the Eaton Centre were reserved for special occasions. Yorkdale was a bit out of the way, but we made the odd pilgrimage to the Muppet Store. (The day we discovered it closed is seared in my memory like a bittersweet The Wonder Years growing up moment.) Eaton Centre was closer but we didn’t go there frequently–it required downtown parking. Dufferin Mall on the other hand was close by, easily accessible, and had both a Toys “R” Us and a McDonald’s. What else does a child need? I only learned later that the shopping centre had a sketchy reputation. I grew up going to the ‘ghetto’ mall and I had no idea.

The location’s reputation for sketchiness predates the shopping centre itself. For almost fifty years it was Dufferin Park, an egg-shaped racetrack nicknamed ‘Little Saratoga.’ It was a popular hub for illegal gambling, loosening the stiff spines of ‘Toronto the Good.’ I had never heard this, nor had anyone I talked to, with the exception of my Grandmother who grew up in the West End. When I asked her if she ever attended and lost money she replied, “No, but lots of nut bars did!”

As David Wencer writes, in the 1880’s the Denison family cleared the brush for a private track, but began leasing it around the turn of the century to a character named Abe Orpen for public races. The former Woodbine bookie had ties to a network of pool halls and betting parlors, and spoke warmly of his acquaintance Al Capone. But he was also very generous, a sort-of Ed Mirvish of the gambling racket. During the Depression he bought daily meals for as many as 500 people and, when he was held for ransom, he convinced his kidnappers to take him to the bank, took out all the money they wanted, and later refused to describe them to police.

Dufferin Park Race Track ca.1910. City of Toronto Archives

The track was also used for baseball games and school athletic competitions, but most romantic are the memories of the circus that came to town at least once a year. As one resident describes in Bloor-Danforth in Pictures, after the train would let the performers off at Lansdowne, “they always had a parade across Bloor Street with elephants…The ladies all dressed up in their spangles and what not, riding on the elephants’ heads. The lions and tigers in cages, poor things. Men walking in very gaudy costumes with a monkey on their shoulders.”

Despite the efforts of the provincial government, the RCMP, and the prissy newspapers of the day to shut it down, the racetrack remained opened until Orpen’s son Fred decided to sell the land in 1955. It explains why such a large track of land was available for a shopping centre in the middle of a residential area.

Dufferin Plaza opened in 1956 with a Loblaws Grocery store. A yellowed holiday flyer from around the time lists the first stores. It features some familiar names (Zeller’s, Coles Book Store, Reitmans, Tip Top Tailors) and others hopelessly from the past (Kromer Radio, United Cigar Stores LTD, F.W. Woolworth Co.). With a car wash, candy shop, and a store specializing in maternity wear, Dufferin Plaza was for the middleclass families who made up the neighbourhood at the time.

Dufferin Plaza, 1957. City of Toronto Archives

Although the mall was renovated into a closed-roof shopping centre in the 1970’s, it was soon overshadowed by the Eaton Centre downtown and new malls cropping up in the suburbs. As Scott Pilgrim opined, it wasn’t “a particularly exciting mall.” When shoppers thought of Dufferin Mall, if they thought of it at all, they pictured the teenagers (there are nine schools in the area) and the Italian, Portuguese, and Greek grandparents who used the space as a community hub. My friend who lives in the neighbourhood calls it ‘the People’s Mall.’

By the early 2000’s, Dufferin Mall was in much need of a makeover. The shopping centre undertook an $11 million renovation in 2006 that wasn’t completed until 2009. Key to that transformation was H&M. (The Swedish retailer often plays midwife to the birth of redesigned malls.) Stores like Aeropostale and the Gap followed. Tatiana Shovkun, the centre’s Marketing Manager, explained that the neighbourhood had gentrified and the mall’s managers set their sights on a new target consumer–the fashion-conscious professional female who follows trends, but not into debt. To do that the mall had to change the way people saw it.

“A lot of people who live in the city, they have this preconceived notion of Dufferin Mall,” Shovkun said. “But a lot of them haven’t been here in years.” After the renovation was complete, “we had a great story to tell, but we realized the people we wanted to bring to the mall would not believe us.” Shovkun worked with a PR agency on an ad campaign encouraging shoppers to take a second look. The resulting photographs feature a beautiful model, shot in black and white, looking elegant and stylish with the tag line, “Dufferin Mall. Really.” With one self-effacing yet defiant word, the shopping centre acknowledged people’s hesitations but asked them to think again. Simple, effective, and funny, the campaign, splashed on billboards around the city, did what campaigns are supposed to do–it got people talking.

Dufferin Mall Really Runway event. Photo: The Style Mogul

The campaign won Dufferin Mall an award from International Council of Shopping Centres, but Shovkun didn’t stop there. She organized a runway presentation in Liberty Village. She reached out to fashion bloggers, got the mall on social media, added free Wifi, and created online style tip sheets, like how shoppers could follow the latest trends with items exclusively from the mall. Shovkun enjoys the back-and-forth of social media and how it creates conversations with consumers rather than the one-way of traditional advertising.

“That way you hear from fans as well, instead of just hearing from people who are annoyed,” she jokes.

Dufferin Mall has given back to the community, particularly with a clothing drive for local women’s shelters that resulted in not just a ton of donated clothing but a sizeable financial contribution to the shelters after the campaign won an award. It’s the award Shovkun is most proud of.

At the moment Dufferin Mall is building a Marshalls, a sister designer discount store to accompany Winners. When I ask Shovkun what Marshalls provides that Winners doesn’t she says a different caliber of brands: “I love Winners, but I recently discovered Marshalls and what kind of great deals they have. I found a Michael Kors dress for $39.99.” These stores would appear to be perfectly synched with the mall’s new ‘stylish yet affordable’ branding.

But when you wander the shopping centre, the ‘old’ Dufferin Mall is still very much present–the roving bands of teenagers, the families immovably parked in the food court, the older people getting into arguments at cell phone kiosks. They may have a Winners and a Marshalls, but the mall’s anchors are still No Frills and Wal-Mart. But the atmosphere is warm and you get a sense the centre is part of the community in a way you don’t at Yorkdale.

After the redesign Shovkun never worried about losing the mall’s longtime regulars. “Our backyard is their houses. This has been their mall for all their lives. There’s space for everybody.” 

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Max Mosher writes about style for Toronto Standard. You can follow him on Twitter at @max_mosher_. 

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