Mall Profile #3: Amazing Brentwood, by Chris Cheung

The Amazing Brentwood
Location: Burnaby
Opened: 1961
Approximate number of stores: 85
Anchor tenants: The Rec Room, H&M, Sephora, LL Bean, London Drugs, many others
 
(To listen to our podcast on Brentwood, click here)

By Christopher Cheung

You’d think a mall that dares to be named “The Amazing Brentwood” would’ve opened with fireworks, marching bands, sword swallowers riding elephants, and shoppers of all creed and colour joining hands to sing and dance.

Instead, Shape Properties opened the Amazing Brentwood in 2019 with many storefronts still closed^[1], the start of a odyssey that has still not seen Amazingness completed. After all, can you really call it an opening when it hadn’t shuffled off the carcass of the old Brentwood, the less-amazing wing that for years had the decaying remnants of stores like the Shoe Company and Accents@Home?

That section is now entirely closed, with a new addition now under construction, but seven years after it reopened, one question persists:

Who came up with this name?!

I would love to be able to visit and enjoy the Amazing Brentwood for what it is, but it’s hard to do so and not judge the mall by how it lives up to its braggadocious name, which is in your face at every turn.

A sign on the street level reads: “COMING SOON: SOMETHING AMAZING: TIM HORTONS.”

A banner wrapped around a construction site: “The Next Phase of Amazing.”

A closer look at the name of the food court reveals that half of the letters are bolded: “TABLES.” Yes, that’s right: TAB, as in, The Amazing Brentwood.

At this point, I’m convinced that I’ve entered into legal contract with the mall for it to deliver me marvels. I round every corner expecting to see firebreathing clowns and three-headed cobras. Instead, the Amazing Brentwood still has empty storefronts.

In that time, I have never heard anyone calling the mall “The Amazing Brentwood” without a hint of irony. So let’s have a look at this creation on its own terms.

Does it have an amazing food court? Amazing activities? Amazing things to buy that you can’t find anywhere else? Because anything less than life changing would be less than amazing.

If there is one thing that’s amazing, it’s the fact that a new and different mall has emerged from the original Brentwood mall that was suburban to the soul.

It opened in 1961 with an Eaton’s and a Loblaws as the anchor tenants. It too had hyperbolic messaging, calling itself “Canada’s Most Modern Shopping Centre.”^[2] Brentwood served the residents who lived just north of the mall, in flat houses on quiet winding streets.

Even back then, Burnaby city hall had been exploring Brentwood’s potential as a town centre of sorts. But even as more density was dumped into the area with each decade, boosted by the opening of the Millennium Line station in 2002, Brentwood still retained a distinctly suburban character.

During the first 20 years of the 21st century, you could argue Brentwood went vertical, but the main ingredients of the neighbourhood were still auto shops, Save-on-Foods, chain restaurants, medical offices, a bowling alley, and cookie-cutter homes in towers with large driveways and otherworldly parking lots, ironic additions for what was supposed to be transit-oriented urbanity.

But when you actually look at the list of things in it, has the Amazing Brentwood actually transformed the area that much? The chain stores are the same ones you can find elsewhere (H&M, Lululemon, Nike). So are the restaurants (Earls, Neptune, Tap & Barrel). There is a sprinkling of Vancouvery spots for suburbanites too scared of homelessness or gridlock to venture further into the city (Lee’s Donuts, Small Victory, La Taqueria). The delightful glass cubes on Lougheed Highway that could’ve played host to some whimsical tenants are instead home to a Starbucks and a McDonald’s. Public art by Douglas Coupland bedazzles the place, a totem pole of local icons that Dorothy Woodend of the Tyee described as “generic Canadiana like hockey sticks, salmon and what kind of look like giant anal beads.”^[3]

The word that comes to mind is not so much “amazing,” but “safe.” There’s no grit here. Not in the pristine streets that run through the development in an attempt to evoke a downtown. Not in the offerings that scream corporate curation rather than organic growth. Ultimately, that’s what a mall is, for better or for worse.

I visit the Amazing Brentwood at least once a month, and one thing that I can genuinely say is amazing is everything that’s sprouted up around it. As Peter of Family Guy once said, “It insists upon itself, Lois.”

That certainly describes Brentwood. But seeing how the real estate developers of other tall-ass, funky-looking condo and commercial developments in the vicinity are piggybacking off of the pure narcissism of the Brentwood boost — Magnum using words like “expanding” and “celebrated”^[4] while Anthem waxes of the “urban, sophisticated and youthful energy of Brentwood”^[5] — the fact that Shape has manifested this energy out of a sleepy mall is nothing less than alchemy.

And (alright, I’ll say it) amazing.

The Amazing Brentwood plans to incorporate over 6,000 homes in the towers above the mall when the community is fully built out. I do wonder if it’s too big. Not in a NIMBY way, like the house-dwellers who are currently crying^[6] on the hillside about how their amazing neighbour is destroying everything, but because whoever manages the mall doesn’t seem to know how to fill that bigness.

The bigness is impressive, if not amazing, in parts. The advanced parking lot with green lights that guide you to your spot. The airy Sporting Life and the enticing halls of the Rec Room, a dreamland for millennials. The outdoor fountain where there are performances on special occasions. The bustling fairs and markets that remind you just how many people now live in this part of the region.

But other parts are big and blank. The indoors has tunnels of nothing, blank walls, and doors that lead down anonymous corridors, a bit too Severance. The elevator, service desk, and walkways that front the atrium suck the soul out of what’s supposed to be the heart of the mall; an elaborate hotel reception in lieu of an actual gathering space. There is a second-floor corridor with a salon, a dentist, and an eyeglasses store where shoppers glide by, with aversion rather than pause to inspect the fine-grained visual interest present at the best malls and high streets.

And a central square that is mostly unusable for four months of the year because of the rain, a big reason why outdoor-centred malls have always been a tough sell here.

Maybe grassroots growth takes time.

There are a few places where it’s begun to give me hope, from the congregation that has taken up in the Cineplex for Sunday service to the old paisanos gathered in the food court, chatting in Italian over toonie coffee.

Good cities are all about letting people express themselves in space. Over time, one can hope that top-down amazingness steps back, and bottom-up character can step in.

Chris Cheung is a Vancouver journalist and writer and author of the upcoming book Very Vancouver: Uncovering the Soul of a West Coast City.

TOTAL SCORE

Small Stores: 3.5/10 (Brentwood is not designed to have quirky stores, random stores, stores that you discover as a surprise and spend 30 minutes in, stores that aren't part of a giant conglomerate, stores with local heart and stories. That some exist at all here seems like a happy accident)

Anchor Tenants: 7.3/10 (It's basically all anchors, and many of them are quite big and good, but aside from the Rec Room and LL Bean, most of them can be found across the Lower Mainland with relative ease)

Food Court: 8.0/10 (From the Oak Berry to the Japadog to Steve's Poke, it's a really solid mix of around 20 places, and while none of them are necessarily worth going out of your way for and the whole thing feels a little clinical and sprawling, it's very good)

Design/Accessibility 5.4/10 (A series of curved lanes and confusing hallways that don't link together, accentuating the feel that you don't go to the Amazing Brentwood to enjoy being in a mall, you go there to visit the one thing you want and then leave, even if everything is well lit and the integration with the SkyTrain station is pefect)

X-Factor: 6.6/10 (It is a fascinating place to be in, and a very modern example of this region going for it when it comes to a new mall, but the joy of all the fancy amenities is mitigated by the various dead zones -- particularly below ground -- and the unresolved question of what the mall is trying to be)

OVERALL: 30.9/50. Less of a mall and more a collection of really solid retail and food options, The Amazing Brentwood is both an important centre of the neighbourhood and a missed opportunity given the amount of time and money devoted to it. Once you figure out the parking and the weird design, you can go and have a good time, but will you think of it as a good mall? We're unconvinced.