Welcome back to another look at The City with Cedric Richards, where you can expect a look at the Forest City with a fresh perspective. Thank you to all of you who have chosen The Loon in reading and subscribing to us each day.
Today, let’s visit Citi Plaza. This is a place that is many things to many Londoners. There is a great chunk of Londoners who still call this place Galleria London, even though I was a child when they still had that name.
Citi Plaza presently has 21 tenants, down from 66 in the years after rebranding from the name Galleria London. I remember around 2011 when they scored a longtime tenant from White Oaks Mall to come downtown. Today, there are times I’ve walked through the place that I wonder if I’m the only person in the entire building. But there were points in time when it seemingly changed downtown London forever. It’s imposing structure comprising two city blocks. It makes things very clear: it’s not going anywhere. Let’s walk through this place and maybe you can get an idea of what kind of future it has in the future of downtown, a place we all talk about.
The History
What is now Citi Plaza was originally called Wellington Square, bounded by Wellington Street, King Street, Clarence Street, and York Street. The mall, developed by Webb & Knapp, opened on August 11, 1960. Even as suburbanization had taken hold in cities like London, this mall’s opening was a statement as it was one of the first enclosed downtown malls in the country, with Eaton’s as an anchor tenant.
Wellington Square continued to be the prominent shopping center in downtown London for the next two decades even as the London Mews opened in the 1970s. Eaton’s further entrenched itself as the centrepiece of the shopping centre when the mall was renamed in 1980 as London Eaton Square, and was renovated with help from the provincial government as part of the Ontario Downtown Redevelopment Program. The mall underwent major construction later that decade, with an extension northward with bridges over King Street. The mall gained a new tenant in 1989 with The Bay which was relocated from Dundas and Richmond and was rebranded from Simpsons only 3 years earlier.
On August 16, 1989, the mall was rebranded as Galleria London. But that peak later became a valley, as the 1990s recession was not kind to the mall. The mall was composed of high-end international chains as well as locally-owned businesses that had moved from Dundas Street. Stores left the mall (and downtown) in droves over the next several years, creating large voids throughout the building.
In a harbinger of things to come, GoodLife Fitness opened a location in the basement of the mall, in 1997. This was a big deal because this was a non-retail business that became a tenant. In the future this mall would be reorienting itself to become a mixed-use building rather than an outright shopping mall. The Eaton’s store, alongside all other locations in Canada, closed down when the company declared bankruptcy in 1999. The Eaton’s became an office building aptly named Wellington Square.
This concept of mixed-use was further entrenched when The Bay moved out of the mall, and north to Masonville Place in 2001. Filling that vacancy was the Central Branch of the London Public Library. Further construction throughout the aughts oriented most stores and restaurants to the ground floor, with offices stationed on the second floor.
On May 7, 2009, Galleria London was rebranded as Citi Plaza, naming itself after a then-major tenant in Citi Cards Canada.
The building adopted the tagline “Work | Shop | Dine | Play | Learn”, owing to the mix of uses of the tenants in the building. It seemed like Citi Plaza was having a moment, people walking through the mall through most of the operating hours, with a full food court during the daytime, with people going into offices during all hours of the day, and a social media presence, but death by a thousand cuts happened to the mall over the next decade.
Remember The Bargain Shop? It closed and was soon replaced by the Middlesex-London health unit, which opened its office in 2021. Subway is the only food-adjacent place in the food court, and has stood alone for the last three years. Many units remain vacant and you can see hints of what they once were.
In recent years, there has been lots of discourse on what to do with the building. Let’s take a walk through the place many Londoners have an opinion about.
New Block - With The Library and Little Else
Let’s start on Dundas Street. This side is the main entrance to the Central branch of the London Public Library. London’s largest branch opened in its current iteration on August 25, 2002. I remember that opening day like it was yesterday. I had never seen such a crowd in that building, mainly because it was a big important day, but also during much of my lifetime the mall had always seen better days.
The library has three floors, and the third floor is the only place on the entire property where such a floor is accessible to the general public. I figured this out first-hand when security chastised me when I walked up the escalator in the centre court in 2019.
The ground floor hallway is known as the Hudson Bay Passageway, in honour of the previous tenant. Across from the main entrance to the library is the library’s last remaining washroom open to the public. The other floors’ washrooms were closed at the start of the pandemic; they remain closed due to public safety concerns. As a frequent patron of this branch, it is not ideal that the only washroom is a long jaunt away if I plan to be on the upper floors, and it does make me consider visiting the other branches near this one. A push for public safety should not come at the expense of user experience and convenience. It should not be a zero-sum game.
The ground floor inside the library is where many patrons check out their materials. Closer to the main mall area once housed a row of computers named the CHUM Media Literacy Center. This was one of those community benefits that CHUM bequeathed upon London when they acquired CFPL-TV, now known as CTV London. There is also a Friends of the London Public Library bookstore; they often run a book sale every October at Centennial Hall just a few blocks north. Just outside of the bookstore was one of London’s three Speakers Corner locations where much like the Citytv counterpart, people would get the word out to the public long before YouTube was a thing.
The third floor contains the London Room, which has been the greatest archive of local history anywhere in the city. Check out the Johnny Cash cardboard cut-out while you’re in there.
The north half of this mall is very vacant except for a Dollarama, a CIBC branch, and hair salon, and H&R Block which is seasonally open. You can see remnants from past stores throughout the corridor that arches from Clarence to Wellington.
Escalators are hit and miss in this building; much of this place may be difficult to navigate for those with mobility challenges.
On the second floor are many offices. Similar to the second floor, you can see the remnants of former offices here, most notably Western Continuing Studies, the continuing education branch of Western University. The corridor outside of Western Continuing Studies is such an interesting liminal space. Every time I’m up here, I wonder if I am allowed to be here. Will I get accosted by a security guard telling me I’m not supposed to be here? The answer is revealed with a further walk which takes us over King Street and to the original mall block.
Original Block - Imagine Cinemas, Subway, and Offices
This block, bounded by Wellington Street, King Street, Clarence Street, and York Street was Wellington Square and later London Eaton Square. Wellington Square now lends its name to an office building component of the property.
Also on the second floor of the original block is Imagine Cinemas, having been rebranded from Rainbow Cinemas in 2016. This is downtown London’s last remaining movie theatre, with the closure of the Capitol Theatre about a quarter of a century ago. I remember it as a kid for a few distinct things: it had cheaper ticket prices and second-run movies. It was the ultimate place of entertainment if you had a working class background.
Adjacent to Imagine Cinemas is a City of London satellite office that houses several different departments, most notably social services.
Going downstairs on what feels like the only functioning escalator in the building, we make our way to the ground floor. The restaurant space oriented towards the street is vacant, last used by the Fox & Fiddle (formerly Elephant & Castle) who left in 2021. You can also see remnants of former tenants like The Source and the 1850 clothing store. You can still see hints of where the Booster Juice was. The food court is empty, save for a Subway.
Across from the Subway and three vacant restaurant units, there is a black countertop. I remember the sushi place that was here and always relied on it for a quick lunch. One of the seating areas in the food court was converted from a Country Style Donuts; this seating area has since been sealed off from the public.
The Bargain Shop closed its only London location years before the pandemic and was replaced by the Middlesex-London Health Unit, which moved from the now-demolished 50 King Street building.
In between - King Street
It is very dark in between the two blocks that make up Citi Plaza, mainly because of the two bridges that connect both sides of the mall. The west end of this block has a mural as I mentioned in an earlier column. At the east end of the block is the Wellington and King rapid transit station. Over the last two years since the shelters have been erected, there has been a great deal of misinformation spread out around them. Presently, council candidates are using the shelters as the poster child of the perceived failures of the current city council. I have used them over the last year whenever I have had to ride the bus, and I have liked the wayfinding, lighting, seating, and the new glass used for these structures. Transit users deserve good things, much like all Londoners who have to navigate throughout this city.
The Future
I also wonder, what is next for Citi Plaza?
As I mentioned above, many people in this city have thoughts on what the future of the building should be. Citi Plaza’s management currently maintains that it is no longer a mall, but a mixed-use building. The real estate agent representing Citi Plaza put forth the idea that this could be home to an interim City Hall while a new municipal headquarters is constructed elsewhere. The city’s own plans are shelved for now, but I think they should have given Citi Plaza’s idea a second look.
The mall (er, mixed-use building) has hosted a number of events like a roller skating night, arts exhibitions, Earth Fest, and was a last-minute replacement venue for a romance novel convention just a few weeks ago.
There are so many things that this place can evolve into. Stakeholders could be more receptive to ideas that can make the building more inviting and less dreary. We cannot go back to the downtown of old, the photos and newsreels of which pepper our social media pages. We can only go forward.
I hope you enjoyed our time together today. We spent time in a place, albeit empty, is one of London’s most interesting buildings. 66 years, two blocks, and so many possibilities.
Check back each Tuesday for my take on experiencing London from a fresh perspective. I am excited to bike around the city and report back to you. I welcome comments, suggestions, and topics to discuss each Tuesday. Please subscribe and let’s talk soon!
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Great article, Cedric. Thank you. As someone who moved to London in 2020, during COVID, your work here and in your previous 'stack has done a lot to educate me about the city outside of Byron. And you are correct, Citi Plaza has a lot of potential for a third life in downtown.