Masonville Place


Masonville Place is a two-story regional shopping mall located in London, Ontario, Canada, at the southeast corner of Fanshawe Park Road and Richmond Street. The mall contains over 130 stores, several restaurants, and a food court. Masonville Place is anchored by several large retailers including Hudson's Bay, Zara, H&M, Sport Chek/Atmosphere, and Shoppers Drug Mart. The Cineplex Cinemas are also located at the shopping centre, featuring a small arcade and an IMAX theatre. It is owned by Cadillac Fairview Corporation Limited.
Masonville Place opened on January 2, 1985. It was the second multi-level shopping centre in London, after Westmount Mall. It was anchored by Sears, Eaton's, and Loblaws. Loblaws, which used to be under the SuperStore Warehouse banner opened on its own in late 1984, preceding the building of the rest of the mall.

Location

The shopping mall is located in North London, adjacent to the transit corridor of Fanshawe Park Road and Richmond Street. It has a bus terminal for the London Transit Commission serviced by the following routes: 10, 13, 13A, 16, 19, 25, 34, 90, 92 and 93. The mall is expected to be the terminus of one route on the planned London Rapid Transit system.

History

Beginnings

Masonville Place was constructed by the Cadillac Fairview Corporation Limited, and opened in 1985.

Expansion

In 1991, Masonville expanded with 75 new stores and services including an indoor miniature golf course, which has since been removed, and replaced with more stores. A Zellers store was built in 1994. It was replaced by Target in 2013. Target later closed all of its Canadian stores, leaving a vacancy in Masonville that has since been filled by Marshalls and HomeSense in 2017. In April 2018, the vacant upper floor of Target was filled by The Rec Room.
In October 1998, the Loblaws store closed and a new standalone Loblaws was opened on the northeast corner of Fanshawe Park Road and Richmond Street. This was around the same time the Eaton's store was closed due to bankruptcy and was replaced with The Bay.

Renovations

On October 29, 2013, Sears Canada announced that it would be closing its store at the mall and several other locations throughout Canada in a bid to reduce costs. There were rumours that Nordstrom, an American retailer, was seeking to fill the space Sears had left, but these were dispelled in 2013 when Cadillac Fairview announced its plans.
On March 29, 2016, Cadillac Fairview announced that Masonville Place would receive major renovations during 2016. The $77 million renovations included a two-level mall expansion into the former Sears store, which had occupied an area of approximately 127,000 square feet. The renovations and mall expansion were completed by November 2016 and includes London's first Disney Store, Zara, Hot Topic and Aroma Espresso Bar along with H&M and Atmosphere/Sport Chek. The Keg moved from Richmond Row in downtown London to occupy a portion of the space in the new renovation. Other stores also moved into previously empty spaces, such as American fashion company Michael Kors, and New York based makeup company NYX Cosmetics. In 2020, it was announced that Urban Planet will replace the former Forever 21 store.