CF Fairview Park Mall


CF Fairview Park is a large shopping mall of 120 stores in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. Anchor stores are Hudson's Bay and Walmart, with one vacant anchor last occupied by Sears for which there are plans for redevelopment in the future.
CF Fairview Park is bounded by Kingsway Drive to the north, Wilson Avenue to the west, Fairway Road to the south, and Highway 8 to the east. Its presence over the years has turned Fairway Road into a major commercial strip. It is one of the four biggest malls in the region with of gross leasable area.
The mall is also a major public transit hub in Waterloo Region. Fairway station, located just west of the mall, is the terminus for many Grand River Transit bus routes as well as the southern terminus of the Ion rapid transit system.

History

Fairview Park opened in 1966, in the Parkway neighbourhood of the recently expanded City of Kitchener. A Simpsons-Sears department store had opened in August 1965, predating the mall's opening by a year, with the rest of the mall being constructed around it.
The initial anchors were Simpsons-Sears at the south end and a Zehrs supermarket at the north end. A new wing with Woolco was added on the east in the early 1970s along with 20 stores, and Simpsons on the west was added in the early 1980s along with 40 more stores. In the time since, Simpsons-Sears has become Sears, Woolco was converted to a Walmart, and Simpsons became The Bay. The small Zehrs supermarket had been located facing Kingsway Drive, but moved to an outdoor plaza on Weber Street on the other side of Highway 8 and its space was redeveloped, partially into the current food court and partially into a PharmaPlus location.
From early 2007 to that summer, the mall underwent a major $33.4-million redevelopment. This renovation included a new food court and new interiors, including higher ceilings. The parking lot was also refurbished. It was the first major renovation since 1986.

Transit terminal

A bus terminal was located beside the southwest entrance to the Hudson's Bay store. This facility operated as a major hub for Grand River Transit, with most of the routes served terminating there. The Region's Ion rapid transit system now services this area as well, at the Fairway station, which has its own associated bus connections; when that station came on-line in June 2019, the existing terminal closed.