Mall Profile #18: Lonsdale Quay Market, by Justin McElroy
No, you won’t be able to spend hours here, but it has worthwhile stores, a good food court, and a unique and physically appealing setting, and that’s a solid combination that many more traditional malls fail to come close to.
Lonsdale Quay Market
Location: North Vancouver
Opened: 1986
Approximate number of stores: 30
Anchor tenants: King Taps, Strathcona North, Coast Quay Hotel
The size and focus of our commercial retail scene has gone through any number of fads and trends, from the explosion of outlets with a Eaton's or Woodward’s in the mid 20th century to the endless attempts at transforming tired suburban malls into Amazing mixed-use condo-heavy projects today.
But in between them, Metro Vancouver went through a bit of a craze with public markets.
“Will market mania pay off? Eight Island clones hope to cash in,” reported the Vancouver Sun in 1985. In the aftermath of the Granville Island Market becoming a runaway hit, virtually every municipality in the region decided that a quasi open-air food and stalls based alternative to a traditional mall would be a hit with the public.
That proved false. Virtually all of them created in that boom have either shuttered, are a shell of their former self (hello, Robson Public Market), or required extensive refurbishment after years of declining public interest (hello, New West’s River Market). It turned out, Metro Vancouverites enjoyed the public market in the context of Granville Island, but not enough anywhere else.
Except for Lonsdale Quay Market.
Opened in 1986, the rotating giant Q has served not just as an excellent landmark and introduction to the North Shore for anyone getting off the SeaBus, but as the logo for a charming if somewhat chaotic mall/market* that bucked Metro Vancouver’s ambivalence to this form through a combination of local connections and a killer space.
*One might argue why the Granville Island Public Market is not being considered as a mall but Lonsdale Quay is, to which we would say that the Public Market itself is almost entirely food based, almost entirely open concept, and hard to talk about separate from Granville Island as a whole, whereas Lonsdale Quay has traditional retail outlets in dedicated spaces on multiple floors with a traditional food court feel on the ground floor, and such tiny distinctions are the foundation on which arbitrary rankings are made.
The local connections are key: longtime independent businesses like Sharky’s Chophouse, The Soup Meister's Nephew, or Margitta’s Flowers are tied to the North Shore community, helping to stop the market from turning into the type of kitschy souvenir-based market you can find on piers across North America. Someone visiting the Shipyards District for a fun weekend trip can enjoy the fudge store and the brewery, while people who live in the area can use Phoenix Books and Essential Kitchenware. Much like the mishmash here between mall-type stores with individual "rooms" and market-type stores with open-air stalls, It’s not the most intuitive of balances, but it works well enough, and ensures there’s a heartbeat to the market beyond nice days in the summer.
But it’s the location that makes Lonsdale Quay Market distinct: we love to be as close to the water as possible in this region, and the Quay Market comes right next to it, with iconic views of Downtown Vancouver that you can enjoy with a pint on the patio of Strathcona Brewery. The creation of the broader Shipyards District has also increased the general foot traffic in the area, giving the area an ease of foot traffic that most traditional suburban malls surrounded by acres of parking lots really struggle with these days. Much like the focus of the space bridges the gap between mall and market, the setting bridges the gap between local and tourist.
There’s plenty of things that you could improve upon Lonsdale Quay Market, and that its renovation over the last couple years failed to really address. The expanded food court is quite good, but doubles down on what was already the strength of operations — meanwhile, the two top floors, with the hotel and non-food retail spaces, feels tacked on and secondary to everything. The kind of sort of but not really integration with the old ICBC headquarters — now owned by the B.C. government, with redevelopment looming — is weird from a navigational standpoint. And there’s a lot of reasons the centre of gravity in the area has shifted 100 metres east to the Shipyards, but one of them is that the market feels sort of cramped, with no significant anchor tenants to keep people around after they get their food or drink.
Still though, as we continue this series, the two most important aspects to any good mall are
1) Does it achieve what it’s trying to be?
2) Is there a sense of an organic community that loves it?
And in both cases, Lonsdale Quay Market passes the test — not with flying colours, but with much more charm and reason for existing than say, the nearby Capilano Mall, or other more traditional malls that struggled much more when traditional retail changed in the 21st century.
It’s why it is the only market built in the aftermath of Granville Island’s success that has consistently worked in the succeeding decades, and given its location and recent renovation, looks to be safe for decades more.
In a world of somewhat bland retail options, may we all be a big red rotating Q, ready to serve good food and great views to neighbour and tourist alike.
TOTAL SCORE
Small Stores: 5.7/10 (It’s a small space, to be sure, but there’s a decent number of fun and relatively unique stores, from Phoenix Books to Blue Teapot to Artisan Wine to Margitta’s Flowers, independent offerings that fit with the general slightly elevated market fare vibe of the entire place)
Anchor Tenants: 2.5/10 (The largest spaces in Lonsdale Quay are operated by restaurants, breweries, a hotel and a dance studio, and while those are good things to have at the commercial heart of a municipality, they aren’t really things to draw people in.)
Food Court: 7.3/10 (Old mainstays like Sharky’s Chophouse and The Soup Meister's Nephew sit next to the modern food court, which has diverse offerings — including Japanese, Brazilian, Chinese and Korean — along with a bar right in the middle. It’s a very good mix, though our “good but not great” score is indicative of the fact that all three of us who scored this went to different places, and none of us were fully satisfied.)
Design/Accessibility: 7.2/10 (The renovation provided a little bit more space without removing the inherent market feel of the place, and you can’t beat the SeaBus accessibility and Peak Vancouver waterfront views. Loses points for ultimately being a bit of a jumble inside with entrances and exits that are far from intuitive.)
X-Factor: 7.9/10 (It’s genuinely a fun place to be, and an important part of what might be the best large public space in Metro Vancouver. Even if you were to remove the obvious geographical advantages, it’s one of the few markets in the region that has managed to stay vibrant for decades.)
OVERALL: 30.6/50 (Lonsdale Quay Market achieves what it sets out to do well, even if it has gotten overshadowed in the last decade with all the developments around it. No, you won’t be able to spend hours here, but it has worthwhile stores, a good food court, and a unique and physically appealing setting, and that’s a solid combination that many more traditional malls fail to come close to.)
