The Bonnie Doon Shopping Centre appears to have escaped the closures and empty storefronts that plague many urban malls by focusing on specialty stores and building a community, through vendors like the Night of Artists Gallery and its yearly art walk and gala.
"You have to not just be cookie cutter and Bonnie Doon is a real unique centre," Tammy Abbott, general manager of the mall for its owner, Morguard, told Taproot. "It's been around since 1958. It started as a strip (mall) centre, and it's evolved from there."
The Bonnie Doon Shopping Centre was once Edmonton's main mall and had some of the biggest national chains, Abbott said. Then, the openings of Southgate Mall (1970) and West Edmonton Mall (1981) saw Bonnie Doon slowly become overshadowed. "So we kind of were the highest of the high and then became the lowest of the low," she said.
In 2016, Sears, one of the mall's anchor tenants, pulled up and left. In 2015, Target left as well. After the Sears departure, the mall announced it was working on a redevelopment. In 2019 city council approved a Morguard proposal to redevelop the 12.4 acre site into a high-density residential and commercial development, with some suggesting work could begin quickly. But Abbott said those plans looked ahead 25 years, and after the COVID-19 pandemic they are on hold.
The pandemic spurred further changes at the mall. Managers switched the mall's focus from retail specifically to community-based, artisanal, and unique offerings. Now you can find everything from art galleries to participatory activities, like the Radio Control Racers racetrack, and the Edmonton Train Collector's Association, as well as specialty stores like Priya's Fashions, a bridal store, and MaKami College, which offers courses in massage therapy, security training, and more in the space that was once the Sears store.
"It's just bringing in different life to the centre, and I think people are kind of enamoured with Bonnie Doon," Abbott said.
Bonnie Doon Shopping Centre attracts around three million people annually, a number that could grow by another million this year, Abbott said, thanks to the Valley Line LRT stop which opened beside the mall in 2023. Abbott said the mall invested $2 million in upgrades to connect to the LRT stop to make a welcoming environment where people want to stay.
A staple of the Bonnie Doon Centre's community is the Night of Artists Gallery, which opened its mall storefront in 2022. Phil Alain started the Night of Artists as a yearly event, which took place in St. Albert and started in 1997. He wanted to do something different and opened the gallery before realizing that the mall would also be the perfect venue to continue his yearly event, which now takes place over three days and ends with a gala.
"When I got into the mall, I realized it could use some extra energy," Alain told Taproot. "The mall was very supportive."
The art walk consists of at least 125 artists, though sometimes more because groups will sign up and feature more than one artist among them. The art walk runs through the entirety of the mall, turning its hallways and gathering spaces into a huge gallery. The permanent Night of Artists gallery space at the mall hosts around 35 artists, 20 of them regulars and others that cycle to keep the gallery fresh.
People attend the Night of Artists Art Walk at the Bonnie Doon Shopping Centre in this file photo. (Tammy Abbott)
Alain said he appreciates how open-minded the Bonnie Doon Centre is, and how managers work with him to create the community he wants to see. "It makes shopping fun again because you're going to be able to find things you just don't find in normal places," he said.
On top of his gallery and the art walk, Alain has more ambitious plans for the mall. In September, he's starting a market event in it, near where the gallery is. It will not only feature visual artists but also artisans of all kinds, Alain said — people making music, chocolate, designer goods, or even brewers making beer. He said that he wants to make the Bonnie Doon Centre comparable to Vancouver's Granville Island, where people can find unique goods that aren't available anywhere else.
The new market event will run every second Saturday of the month, starting Sept. 14. The next Night of Artists Art Walk will run from March 14 to 16, 2025.