Les Promenades Gatineau is a major shopping centre located in Canada's National Capital Region. It is located in the city of Gatineau, Quebec near the intersection of Greber and Maloney Boulevards, one of the city's busiest intersections and just off Autoroute 50. It is the city's biggest mall by retail space and clientele.
Description
It is considered to be the second largest shopping centre in the Gatineau-Ottawa area in terms of retail space, trailing only St. Laurent Centre's. The website claims it has about in total space including its three-story office building in the south side of the complex that houses a dental clinic and federal government offices. The mall is sprawled out on one single level with several secondary corridors and sections lined up in different directions which can make it difficult to locate smaller boutiques. The anchor tenants at Les Promenades include La Baie d'Hudson, Costco, La Maison Simons and Sports Experts. This shopping centre is located in a very busy part of the city, and draws people from all over as it is on many transit routes as well. With Polyvalente Le Carrefour High School being across the road from one of the shopping centre's entrances, students often visit the shopping centre on their lunch breaks, or after school. The centre, which recently has been completely renovated and rejuvenated, now houses several new retailers that have opened in the shopping centre including H&M, DavidsTea, La Maison Simons and Forever 21.
History of Les Promenades
The mall opened its doors in 1978 as Les Promenades de l'Outaouais and became a major shopping destination for the City of Gatineau and surrounding areas. During the 1990s and early 2000s, the mall did experience some difficulties as several large retail spaces were left vacant frequently as several stores and even anchor tenants closed their doors. In the 1990s, K-Mart, Eaton's and Steinberg, which at one point were the mall's three anchor tenants, all closed their doors. The Kmart location was occupied by the Laura superstore. It was also, briefly, The Bay's appliance section location. The space has since been expanded to accommodate the new La Maison Simons store at the mall. In the late 1990s, the shopping centre made a major expansion on its eastern end. Previously, the mall ended where the Famous Players cinemas were located. When the renovation process ended, a new anchor tenant was in place: la Baie. Also, a Dollarama, a food court, a new office building, a Christopher International hair salon, and an artisan or small merchants zone were added. Also during the 1990s, the Eaton store on the western end of the shopping centre closed its doors. During the next several years that area was for the most part left vacant except when Laura occupied the area for a small period. However, in March 2006, Costco had relocated its location from the north end of the city to its current location at les Promenades bringing a new life to its western end which was often plagued with numerous vacant spaces for several years. Archambault, a Quebec music franchise store also opened a location in 2005 near Costco and the Buffet Paradis, the mall's Chinese restaurant. Steinberg also had a supermarket in the mall since his opening, but closed after the company folded in 1992. It was later occupied by Super C and Metro. In 2008, Metro closed and the space remained empty until Urban Planet took over. In 2017, Urban Planet moved to a smaller vacant location across the hall to make room for Marshalls and HomeSense opened in March 2018.
Transportation
Being at one of the city's busiest intersections and near the city's main highway, it is very easily accessible and parking space is abundant. The Société de transport de l'Outaouais offers several routes that travel to various areas across the city from the shopping mall. It is considered, outside of the downtown core, the most important transit hub in the city. On average per day, 8,000 shoppers use public transit for shopping. The STO has a major Park and Ride facility of over 500 parking spaces in proximity the mall. It has also recently rebuilt the transit terminal and built a new client service centre inside the mall. The client service centre has since moved to La Cité Station when the Rapibus Transit Corridor was opened on October 19, 2013. The number of Park and Ride spaces was also significantly reduced. Transit accessibility was greatly improved with the opening of the Rapibus station on the north side of the mall. Routes that serve the shopping centre include:
Routes 57, 63 and 67 which serves on La Savane Road.
Rapibus Routes 68, 100, 200, 300, 400, 800 and 810 are serving Les Promenades Rapibus Station on the North side of Maloney Boulevard.
Previous the majority of the Gatineau sector local routes ended at Les Promenades Gatineau. Since the Rapibus opened, the majority of the local routes are now ending at La Gappe, La Cité and Labrosse stations which transfer to the Rapibus routes which serves on the north side of Maloney Boulevard.
