When Yorkdale Shopping Centre opened 50 years ago, it was anchored by two stores, occupied nearly one million square feet and had 6,500 parking spaces. At the time, it was the largest mall in the world.
Now, weeks away from breaking ground on its fourth transformation in the past 10 years, the shopping centre occupies 1.6 million square feet, has attracted high-end U.S. retailers and has 7,400 parking spaces.
A recent IFMA Toronto tour of Yorkdale revealed how the shopping centre is not only expanding, but it is also upgrading its facilities, from smart parking spaces to state-of-the-art surveillance systems.
In 2012, the mall added 145,000 square feet in a southwest expansion, at a cost of $220 million. It attracted first-to-Canada locations of Loft and Kate Spade New York, among other retailers. It also built a 45,000-square foot food court, dubbed Dine on 3, and 800 underground parking spaces.
Anthony Casalanguida is the director of Yorkdale, where he oversees a staff of 200, including cleaning, administration, guest services, operations and security. He says that not a single tenant was signed when the shopping centre began construction on these recent expansions. Based on their confidence in what the shopping centre has to offer, and feedback from retailers, it was an approach of ‘If you built it, they will come.’
A key challenge during the construction of the food court was to ensure that the customer experience remained pleasant while the work took place on top of a “live” shopping centre, he says. It requires a concerted effort to mitigate the usual side effects of construction — dust, power outages, water main breaks, entrance closures and parking reductions.
With construction completed, the customer experience remains a priority for Casalanguida. From a facilities perspective, bathrooms say a lot about a shopping centre, he says. That is why it’s important to ensure that they remain clean and with warm water.
Property manager Ryan DaSilva says that as staff patrol through the wide promenades of the mall, they are constantly on the lookout for stray trash, while also checking that tenants are fulfilling their lease obligations, such as keeping their storefront windows clean.
Beyond the bathrooms, Casalanguida points out that the customer experience “starts and ends in the parking lot.” That is why where a standard parking space will cost $45,000, Yorkdale has spent $100,000 on each of its 800 new parking spaces.
The parking spaces all feature an overhead lighting that is green when available and red when occupied, DaSilva explains. This allows drivers to easily identify available spaces without driving up and down each row, which reduces so-called “dwell time.”
Upstairs in the security offices, security manager Keith LeClair notes that, once the details are worked out with Ontario’s privacy commissioner, Yorkdale will also use license plate recognition technology to identify stolen vehicles via the Canadian Police Information Centre database.
“By creating the type of technology, we’re making it uncomfortable for criminals at the shopping centre,” Casalanguida says.
In addition, Yorkdale has upgraded to 29-megapixel cameras that have 360-degree constant viewing, and adopted a Vigilant IP surveillance system, at a cost of $3.5 million. The 38 new cameras blanket the parking areas and entranceways. Soon, security staff will monitor the footage on a bank of screens from a base station. By mid-year, Casalanguida anticipates the shopping centre’s interior cameras will be upgraded as well.
Also upstairs, the new food court is now located in its own space, separated from the retail stores. (Casalanguida says that kids would eat previously their KFC in front of Louis Vuitton.)
Out of view from customers, about 10,000 racks of dishes are scraped and washed in the purpose-built scullery each week, says maintenance manager Joe Rodrigues. Yorkdale has a waste diversion rate that fluctuates between 74 and 82 per cent (it is lower during the holiday season).
Yorkdale did not apply for LEED certification. Casalanguida says that the impetus from customers does not exist in the same way it does in the corporate world — at least not yet. Plus, with tenants individually metered for gas and electrical use, benchmarking would be difficult.
Construction on Yorkdale’s next expansion is expected to begin soon. The new 298,000-square-foot space, to be anchored by the store Nordstrom, is slated to be completed in fall 2016.
Michelle Ervin is the editor of Canadian Facility Management & Design.
