Mall Profile #10: Crystal Mall, by Justin McElroy

Crystal Mall
Location: Burnaby
Opened: 2000
Approximate number of stores: 200
Anchor tenants: Hilton Hotel, wet market, food court, "The Best Shop"

(To listen to our podcast on Crystal Mall, click here)

You could tell the story of Metro Vancouver’s best malls or the region’s modern history without mentioning Crystal Mall.

But it would be a hell of a lot less interesting, and much less tasty.

Located a block away from the Burnaby behemoth of Metrotown — the 500-pound prototype for a big destination mall — Crystal Mall is eclectic by comparison. It’s a mishmash of cramped stores and a cursed parking lot, centred around a wet market and food court, with a hotel and a Chinese Christian community centre among the biggest tenants.       

And it works. 

There are a lot of reasons why Crystal Mall is much busier than most mid-sized malls in Metro Vancouver these days, but a big reason is what it focuses on: a sprawling food court on the second floor and market on the first floor, with a bevy of family-owned services-based stores in the spiralling corridors that emanate from the centre. 

These are good things for any mall to have — and it certainly helps that the food court is so good and so full of tasty dan dan noodles and durian milkshakes and various other Chinese and Southeast Asian regional specialities — but they’re also elements of a mall less affected by retail’s 21st century digital transformation. While other malls have faced constant pressures of big box bankruptcies and ever changing fashion trends, Crystal Mall knows you need food and pedicures and your phone fixed, and you need to get these things in a physical location, and as such it hasn’t really needed to pivot since it opened in 2000.  

At the same time, it also reflects the original purpose of the mall, one not rooted in sparking development in the area or opening up a new Eaton’s Bay Target Place Your Pick Here, but of meeting the cultural needs of B.C.'s third largest municipality (and arguably its most diverse), Burnaby.  

The story of Crystal Mall was best told by Chris Cheung, who wrote the definitive article on its creation for The Tyee in 2019, and since he is our podcast guest for this episode, I will quote liberally instead of trying to outwrite him. The backstory is that for decades the corner of Kingsway and Willingdon was home to the Dragon Inn — a popular archetype of the 20th century Chinese Canadian buffet — but the family behind it decided to sell, and famed local architect and developer Stanley Kwok saw a new challenge. To quote Cheung:

“Vancouver’s Chinatown was suffering a classic case of inner-city decline — its proximity to the impoverished Downtown Eastside hurt its reputation — and Richmond was quickly evolving into a home for new East Asian immigrants. Hong Kong and Taiwanese investors had just started building Richmond’s first “Asian malls,” effectively indoor Chinatowns for the suburbs.

“Burnaby doesn’t have one of those,” thought Kwok. But he didn’t want to do a run-of-the-mill suburban mall.

Kwok wanted to avoid criticisms of North American malls, which were being accused of killing local character and prioritizing chains over mom-and-pop businesses. He didn’t even want a major anchor tenant, just a big market and food court.

His solution was to reject the traditional mall model that saw businesses lease space from the owner and agree to rules on everything from hours to signage.

“Chinese like to own their own thing,” Kwok said.

So the units, from the shops to the offices, were stratified, meaning they were available for purchase. This required dizzying legal work.

It was unusual, as no mainstream mall in Metro Vancouver was made up of independently owned units and businesses. Merchants could sell what they wanted and add personal touches to their businesses. The inspiration was a Hong Kong street market.

All of that intent can be seen in Crystal Mall today: the stratification of the stores and lack of a manager means a mishmash of outlets less chainlike in nature. The focus on the market and the food court mean there’s a constant array of people quickly moving in and out of the most visible parts of the mall. If your reference point for malls is Metrotown, it’s decidedly unmanicured, a little hectic, and maybe a little unkempt in spots outside the centre.

And yet. It’s a place with good food, it’s a place with good community — the food court serves as a community gathering space for everything from pop-up holiday markets to the only mayoral debate Burnaby has had in the last decade — and it’s one of the few malls in Metro Vancouver that has arguably grown in reputation the last 20 years.   

You can focus on the things Crystal Mall isn’t, but if you appreciate the things that it is, you’ll have a better understanding of what works for shopping malls in 2026.

TOTAL SCORE

Small Stores: 6/10 (We’ve got plenty of variety, particularly when it comes to specialty grocery stores, beauty salons, electronics, and around 10 different currency exchanges. But there’s little in the way of fashion or furniture, and the contrast in energy between the food court/wet market and the corridors is noticeable)

Anchor Tenants: 4.8/10 (A hotel will never be anybody’s idea of a good anchor, but the wet market genuinely works as an interesting destination place for people to get their food, and the newly opened “The Best Shop” is a solid and sprawling homecare and beauty product retail outlet that feels vibrant.)

Food Court: 9.1/10 (The undisputed highlight of the mall, a huge selection of mom and pop small businesses of various Asian cuisines — and don’t sleep on the high number of dessert choices — with a combination of quantity and quality that puts it in the S-Tier of Metro Vancouver food courts. Loses the slightest of points for a lack of vegetarian options, but if you have no dietary restrictions and don’t like this food court, we can’t be friends)

Design/Accessibility: 7.1/10 (It's a legitimately inspired design — the 'shards of building forms' a real example of form guiding function — centring the food court and market while making the secondary areas visually interesting enough to pause and explore. But the less said about the parking lot the better)

X-Factor: 6.3/10 (It’s a mall with energy at all times of the day and a real contribution to the unique diversity of Metro Vancouver. Is it somewhat chaotic and starting to show a bit of its age? A teeny bit. But may we all be this interesting in middle age.)

OVERALL: 31.7/50 (It is a vibrant mall, a distinct mall, a mall with possibly the best food court in the region, and a great example of how there’s more than one way to build a solid mall.)

We’ll end this review with a poem all its own, from former Metro Vancouver resident David Marino, a university colleague of mine who wanted to “write a poem (elementary school style with rhymes) about Crystal mall.” 

It is published below, with no edits, as singular as the mall itself. 

O crystal mall

You are a ball

When I was 12, that statue made me lol

But now, she is my queen, mother to all

RIP Abdul's BBQ, sauce eternal, closing was a pity

That food court, cash only, is the best in the city

Love Computer Lane, where GPUs flowed like water

With a good enough PC, you don't need a father

Buy a piano, book a trip, get a haircut

There's even a fresh market downstairs--say what?!

Gundam, Figurines, MTG

Hobby JR is the place to be

Do not heed the HILTON HOTEL.

Do not look at the HILTON HOTEL.

Just ignore HILTON HOTEL.

Mabe HILTON HOTEL will go away (HILTON HOTEL)

Who invited HILTON HOTEL*?

*Poet's note: honestly it is not a bad hotel all things considered and I even recommend it to people visiting sometimes but why is it there