Deerfoot City is an outdoor shopping centre located in northeast Calgary,

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...

, Canada. It opened in 1981 as Deerfoot Outlet Mall, just east of

Deerfoot Trail Deerfoot Trail is a freeway segment of Highway 2 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. It stretches the entire length of the city from south to north and links suburbs to downtown via Memorial Drive and 17 Avenue SE. The freewa ...

(Highway 2) on 64th Avenue NE. The 1.1 million square foot shopping centre, owned by Shape Properties, sits on an 80-acre site.
deerfootcity.com, Retrieved 18 August 2017

History

Upon its opening, the mall's anchor tenants were

Woolco Woolco was an American-based discount retail chain. It was founded in 1962 in Columbus, Ohio, by the F. W. Woolworth Company. It was a full-line discount department store unlike the five-and-dime Woolworth stores which operated at the time. At i ...

Canada Safeway Safeway (also referred to as Canada Safeway) is a Canadian supermarket chain of 135 full service supermarket stores mostly operating in the western provinces in Canada. It was established in 1929 as a subsidiary of the American Safeway Inc., be ...

, and The Bay. The original mall featured 80 retailers, including a mixture of chain and independent businesses, a bowling alley, and a food court. During the mall's early history, all three anchors closed or were rebranded: Woolco became

Walmart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...

; Safeway closed; and The Bay location was taken over by

Sears Canada Sears Canada Inc. was a publicly-traded Canadian company affiliated with the American-based Sears department store chain. In operation from 1952 until January 14, 2018, and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, the company began as Simpsons-Sears ...

. Eventually, the former Safeway location was divided up into several smaller retailers, including

Winners Winners Merchants International L.P is a chain of off-price Canadian department stores owned by TJX Companies. It offers brand name clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, fine jewelry, beauty products, and housewares. Products are at a 20-60 ...

. By the 1990s, Deerfoot Mall was considered an "

outlet mall An outlet store, factory outlet or factory shop is a brick and mortar or online store in which manufacturers sell their stock directly to the public. Traditionally, a factory outlet was a store attached to a factory or warehouse, sometimes allowin ...

," billing itself as "Western Canada's only enclosed outlet mall."Frommer's Alberta
p. 101 (2011) In the 2000s, both Walmart and Sears closed their locations within the mall, with Walmart opening a standalone store to the immediate southeast of the building, and Sears closing its store altogether. This left Winners and the bowling alley as the mall's last remaining anchors, though both the former Walmart and Sears locations were redeveloped for other retailers. A plan announced in September 2013 called for converting the enclosed mall into an open-air regional centre, and add over 500,000 additional square feet of retail space.(13 September 2013)

'' Calgary Herald'' It was subsequently renamed Deerfoot City. As of 2019, major anchors include The Rec Room, Wal-Mart, Canadian Tire, Cabela's, Goodlife Fitness, Dollarama and Winners. The original mall structure has been split into three sections that are separated by roadways, with larger "big box" retailers such as Cabela's taking up locations along the property's periphery. Image:Deerfootmall Drive-in.jpg, Deerfoot Mall often hosted special events in its parking lot, ranging from circuses to "drive in movie nights".

References

{{coord, 51.1085, N, 114.0417, W, display=title Shopping malls in Calgary Shopping malls established in 1981 1981 establishments in Alberta

History

See also

References