13 Metro Vancouver Malls That Changed Beyond Recognition

Park Royal opened in West Vancouver in fall 1950 and calls itself Canada’s first enclosed shopping centre. Seventy-odd years later, the malls that followed it across Metro Vancouver have been roofed, doubled, merged, renamed, stacked with towers or flattened outright. Oakridge Park, the rebuilt Oakridge Centre, opened on May 28, 2026.

The department stores that anchored them are mostly gone too. Woodward’s, Eaton’s and Sears went first. Hudson’s Bay closed all of its remaining stores on June 1, 2025, including the ones at Park Royal, Richmond Centre, Metrotown, Coquitlam Centre and Guildford.

This is a mall-by-mall look at what these places were, what they turned into, and why. Where a site is still mid-rebuild, you’ll find what’s actually confirmed and what’s still only on paper.

13. Capilano Mall (North Vancouver)

Capilano Mall opened on Marine Drive in the late 1960s. Sources disagree on the year. One says March 1967, and others say 1969. It was expanded and renovated in the ’70s and ’80s.

Its Sears anchor closed in January 2018, after the chain went bankrupt. That space reopened in July 2023 as the North Shore Bike Park, billed as B.C.’s largest indoor bike park, but the park left the mall at the end of March 2025 and has since moved to Maple Ridge. Coverage of the redevelopment noted the mall had lost much of its share of the Shore’s shoppers as Park Royal kept expanding.

This one is about to change rather than already gone. Owner QuadReal’s 2025 application proposes 11 towers of 18 to 40 storeys with about 3,400 homes. The plan includes no replacement indoor mall. The revised version is designed so the mall can stay open through part of construction. Final council approval hasn’t been confirmed.

Local tip: if you have memories here, now is the time to take your own photos. The building is unlikely to look like this much longer.

12. Lansdowne Centre (Richmond)

Before it was a mall, this was the Lansdowne Park horse-racing track. It shut down after the city bought the land in 1958. The mall was built in 1977, and Vanprop has owned it since 1984.

Inside, it has barely changed since the 1970s. The interior still follows a racetrack-shaped loop, which is a fitting echo of the site’s first life.

That’s set to end. Richmond council approved the master plan in March 2021. It will replace the 1977 mall in phases across the site, with about 4,000 homes once it’s fully built. The first homes are expected in 2030. The mall stays open during phase one, which also adds pedestrian paths to Lansdowne station on the Canada Line, right beside the site.

Local tip: an earlier news report said the mall would stay open ‘until 2025,’ with the closure date not finalized. That didn’t happen. Phased demolition comes later, so the old loop is still there to walk.

11. Royal City Centre, formerly Woodward’s and Woodward Place (New Westminster)

Woodward’s opened a store at Sixth Street and Sixth Avenue in March 1954. About 4,000 people lined up on opening day, which the archives’ crowd photos date to March 11. Locals still call the corner 6th and 6th.

In the early 1990s the store was rebuilt into a larger complex called Woodward Place. Sources split on the year. A city heritage document says 1991, and the archives record says 1992. Either way, the name didn’t last. After Woodward’s went bankrupt, the mall was renamed Royal City Centre in August 1993.

Zellers moved into the old Woodward’s space and eventually closed as well. That makes this corner a two-chain casualty, and one of the clearest local examples of how fast the old anchors fell.

Local tip: the New Westminster Archives holds 1989 photos of the old Woodward’s at this corner. They’re the best way to see what stood here before.

10. Guildford Town Centre (Surrey)

Guildford opened in 1966 and has been renovated many times since. Unlike Oakridge and Brentwood, it grew rather than being knocked down.

The latest modernization ran in three phases from 2010 to 2014. It started with a Walmart Supercentre and parkade. Then it added 200,000 square feet at the south end, including a 1,034-seat food court and 75 new stores.

The mall now covers 1.2 million square feet with more than 200 retailers and a 12-screen theatre. In 2025 it opened a 12,000-square-foot, two-storey Nike concept store, the first of its kind in B.C. Its Hudson’s Bay was among the stores that closed in 2025.

Local tip: buses run through Guildford Exchange, so transit works here even without a SkyTrain stop.

9. Coquitlam Centre (Coquitlam)

Coquitlam Centre opened in August 1979 as a $50-million mall with three department stores under one roof: Eaton’s, Woodward’s and The Bay. The City of Coquitlam Archives puts opening day at August 15, 1979.

On opening day its 4,200-stall parking lot was still mostly surrounded by bush, a trailer park and a few houses. The town centre around it came later. The building won an International Council of Shopping Centres merit award in 1980.

A 2001 expansion took it past 914,000 square feet. The three original anchors are all gone now. Woodward’s and Eaton’s went out of business, and The Bay closed in 2025.

Local tip: the City of Coquitlam’s 40-year history page has opening-day photos.

8. CF Richmond Centre, formerly Richmond Square (Richmond)

Richmond Square opened on No. 3 Road in 1964. A separate Hudson’s Bay wing followed in 1966. For more than two decades they were neighbours rather than one mall.

In 1989 the Bay merged with Richmond Square to form Richmond Centre. A Famous Players cinema arrived in 1990. That was the version many Richmond kids grew up with.

Now the mall is being rebuilt in pieces. The first phase of a $2.1-billion redevelopment replaced a parking lot, a parkade and the Sport Chek wing with mixed-use buildings up to 14 storeys, and it was finished by the 2025 holiday season. The next phase replaces the former Sears footprint, the remaining parkade and surface parking. The whole project adds roughly 2,300 homes. Cadillac Fairview posts updates on its redevelopment page.

Local tip: phase one opened with a light-show Christmas tree that the mall billed as Metro Vancouver’s tallest. The mall sits at the southern end of the Canada Line at Richmond-Brighouse.

7. The City of Lougheed, formerly Lougheed Mall (Burnaby)

Lougheed Mall opened in 1969 on the Burnaby side of North Road. Its Bay store, which opened in August 1969, was the chain’s first location inside a shopping centre. The mall doubled in size in 1986.

Shape Properties is turning the site into The City of Lougheed, a 37-acre master-planned community. The four towers of the first phase went up in 2023. The original Bay store closed for good in December 2023, about a year and a half before the rest of the chain. Shape says that space will be folded into future phases.

The existing mall is still running while the new pieces go up. Shape lists it at 615,000 square feet of retail. The project page shows how the phases fit together.

Local tip: the site connects directly to Lougheed Town Centre station, where the Expo and Millennium lines meet. It’s a short SkyTrain ride from the Tri-Cities.

6. Central City, formerly Surrey Place (Surrey City Centre)

Surrey Place opened in August 1972 with Simpson-Sears, Hudson’s Bay, Super Valu and a run of smaller specialty shops. Locals remember the big wood-carved SP logo at the entrance. Nearby Whalley Exchange became Surrey Central station in 1994.

The turn came in 2002. SFU opened a temporary campus inside the mall, in old Tech BC space that had once been a Zellers. In 2006 a campus building designed by Bing Thom opened on top of the mall. By then the centre had already been renamed Central City, about 30 years after it opened.

Putting a university on a suburban mall changed what the building is for. It went from a shopping trip to a daily destination for students. SFU tells the full story on its Surrey campus history page.

Local tip: look up at the galleria roof. It’s part of the Bing Thom design that made the whole thing work.

5. Park Royal (West Vancouver)

Park Royal opened in fall 1950 with a Woodward’s department store, a Woodward’s food store and 25 other stores and services. The centre bills itself as Canada’s first enclosed shopping centre, though its own timeline says the north mall was converted from an open strip centre to an enclosed mall in 1969.

The name came from the Guinness family. Their brewery was in the Park Royal district of London. The south side began with a single White Spot across Marine Drive in 1955. In 1961 an overpass formally linked the two properties, turning one mall into a pair.

The open-air Village at Park Royal opened in September 2004 and changed how the place feels at street level. The Hudson’s Bay store closed in 2025 along with the rest of the chain’s B.C. locations. The mall’s own history page lays out the full timeline.

Local tip: when you cross the overpass over Marine Drive, you’re walking the 1961 link that first stitched the north and south malls together.

4. The Amazing Brentwood, formerly Brentwood Mall (North Burnaby)

Brentwood opened in 1961 with T. Eaton Co., Loblaw Groceteria and Zellers as its first flagship tenants. It started as an open-air strip mall. A roof went over it in the early 1970s, and a second floor and a food court came in the late 1980s.

The big shift came with transit. Brentwood Town Centre station opened in 2002, and the land around it became far more valuable than a two-storey mall could justify. Shape Properties built The Amazing Brentwood beside the old building. The original indoor mall, known in its final years as the Interior Centre, closed for good on Monday, May 5, 2025.

The old mall’s footprint is next. Shape’s revised plan calls for two towers of 55 to 80 storeys at the core of the 28-acre site. The official site has the latest from the owner.

Local tip: London Drugs was the last store to leave the old mall. It moved to the outdoor plaza at The Amazing Brentwood, so you can still find it a short walk from where it used to be.

3. Metropolis at Metrotown, formerly Eaton Centre Metrotown (Burnaby)

Eaton Centre went up next to Metrotown in 1989. Walking overpasses tied it to the malls beside it, so a Saturday trip meant hopping between buildings.

The Eaton’s chain declared bankruptcy in 1999. In 2005 a major renovation merged Eaton Centre into Metrotown to create Metropolis at Metrotown. Its Hudson’s Bay closed in 2025.

The bigger change is still ahead. Burnaby has backed a 100-year plan to turn the 44-acre (17.7-hectare) mall site into a true, single downtown. The owner’s master plan proposes 12,000 homes and 15 towers. Separately, the former Sears Metrotown site became Concord Metrotown.

Local tip: if you remember climbing the overpass stairs from the SkyTrain, those walkways were part of the old multi-mall setup that the 2005 merger ended. Metrotown station on the Expo Line is next to the mall.

2. Pacific Centre: the Eaton’s building and the glass rotunda (Downtown Vancouver)

Pacific Centre opened in 1971, and the 30-storey TD Tower followed in 1972. The building at Granville and Robson was built for Eaton’s in 1971. Its windowless white tile facade earned it the nickname the Great White Urinal.

That building has had more tenants than most malls have had renovations. Sears ran the store from 2002 to 2012. The last white panel eventually came off. Nordstrom took over the space and closed in June 2023. Aritzia is due to open a flagship of about 40,000 square feet in part of that space in 2027.

At Georgia and Howe, the glass-domed rotunda was demolished in 2020. A former city planning director helped create it in the 1980s, and critics saw its loss as the loss of a rare public space downtown. It was replaced by a two-storey, 14,000-square-foot pavilion that opened as the Apple Pacific Centre flagship store in November 2022.

Local tip: Vancouver City Centre station on the Canada Line is under the mall, so you can come up from the platform straight into the building.

1. Oakridge Park, formerly Oakridge Centre (Vancouver)

Oakridge Centre opened in 1959 at Cambie and 41st, on a site its owners now describe as 28 acres, with Woodward’s as its anchor. The Bay took over that spot in 1993. For decades it was the low-rise mall at the top of the Cambie slope.

In summer 2020 the owners decided to close the whole mall to speed up construction. Hudson’s Bay shut its store in March 2021 so its wing could come down. The old building was replaced from scratch, and the new mall is planned at twice the size of the one it replaced.

Oakridge Park opened on May 28, 2026, with 100+ brands across 650,000 square feet of retail. More phases are still rolling out. When the site is finished it will hold homes for 6,000+ residents and a nine-acre public park with concerts, playgrounds, a running loop and a cycling network.

Local tip: part of the 7.5-acre rooftop park opened on day one. Go up there to get a sense of how much bigger this site is than the mall it replaced. The site connects directly to the Canada Line, so you can leave the car at home.

When they opened, and what happened next

Mall	Opened	Change
Woodward’s New Westminster (Royal City Centre)	1954	Rebuilt as Woodward Place (1991/92); renamed 1993
Park Royal	1950	South side 1955–61; Village 2004; Bay closed 2025
Oakridge Centre	1959	Closed 2020, demolished; Oakridge Park opened 2026
Brentwood	1961	Old indoor mall closed May 5, 2025
Richmond Square / Richmond Centre	1964	Merged 1989; $2.1B redevelopment
Guildford	1966	Expanded 2010–2014
Capilano Mall	1967 or 1969	11-tower plan filed 2025
Lougheed Mall	1969	City of Lougheed; Bay closed Dec 2023
Pacific Centre	1971	Eaton’s → Sears → Nordstrom → Aritzia (2027)
Surrey Place / Central City	1972	SFU campus on top (2002/2006)
Lansdowne Centre	1977	Phased replacement; first homes 2030
Coquitlam Centre	1979	All three original department stores gone
Eaton Centre Metrotown	1989	Merged into Metropolis 2005

The department stores that disappeared

• Woodward’s anchored Oakridge until The Bay took over in 1993. In New Westminster, the mall dropped the Woodward Place name in August 1993 after the chain went bankrupt.
• Eaton’s declared bankruptcy in 1999. Its Pacific Centre store became Sears from 2002 to 2012.
• Sears left Capilano Mall in January 2018, after the company went bankrupt.
• Hudson’s Bay closed every remaining store on June 1, 2025. Lougheed, its first mall store, had already closed in December 2023, and Oakridge closed in March 2021 for demolition.

Seeing the new versions by SkyTrain

• Oakridge Park connects directly to the Canada Line.
• The City of Lougheed connects to Lougheed Town Centre station on the Expo and Millennium lines.
• The Amazing Brentwood is at Brentwood Town Centre station on the Millennium Line.
• Lansdowne station sits next to Lansdowne Centre, and CF Richmond Centre is at Richmond-Brighouse, both on the Canada Line.
• Pacific Centre sits above Vancouver City Centre station on the Canada Line.
• Metropolis at Metrotown is next to Metrotown station, and Central City is by Surrey Central, both on the Expo Line.

Park Royal, Capilano Mall and Royal City Centre aren’t at SkyTrain stations, so use TransLink’s trip planner for bus connections.

Malls still open while they’re rebuilt

• Lansdowne Centre stays open during phase-one construction. The first new homes are expected in 2030.
• Lougheed’s existing mall, listed at 615,000 square feet, runs alongside the new phases.
• Capilano Mall’s revised plan is designed so the mall can stay open through part of construction.

When to go

If you want to see a rebuild while it’s new, Oakridge Park’s rooftop park is the clearest view of the change. The section that has already opened is part of a 7.5-acre rooftop space. CF Richmond Centre’s first redevelopment phase, which debuted for the 2025 holidays with a light-show Christmas tree, is the reason to head south on the Canada Line. The 78-foot tree is lit again on Saturday, Nov. 14, 2026, at 6 p.m. Hours change during construction, so check each mall’s official page before you set out.

Etiquette and safety

Several of these sites are active construction zones. Stick to marked walkways and posted detours, and keep kids close near hoarding and site entrances. If you’re photographing the old buildings for posterity, shoot from public sidewalks and stay out of fenced areas.

What’s planned on the old mall sites

Site	Site size	Homes planned	Towers and height	Status
Oakridge Park	28 acres	Homes for 6,000+ residents	Not stated	Mall opened May 28, 2026; more phases coming
The Amazing Brentwood	28 acres	Not stated	Two towers, 55 to 80 storeys, on old mall footprint	Old indoor mall closed May 5, 2025
The City of Lougheed	37 acres	Not stated	Four first-phase towers built 2023	Existing mall open alongside new phases
Metropolis at Metrotown	44 acres	12,000	15 towers	100-year plan backed by Burnaby
CF Richmond Centre	Not stated	About 2,300	Phase 1 buildings up to 14 storeys	Phase 1 finished by 2025 holiday season
Lansdowne Centre	50 acres	About 4,000	Not stated	First homes expected 2030; mall open in phase one
Capilano Mall	Not stated	About 3,400	11 towers, 18 to 40 storeys	Application filed 2025; approval not confirmed

The pattern is hard to miss once you lay it out. The malls that opened between 1950 and 1989 were built for cars and department stores. Both of those assumptions have worn thin, and the land under them, especially beside SkyTrain stations, is now worth more as housing. Some sites, like Guildford, kept growing as malls. Others, like Oakridge and Brentwood, were replaced by something bigger. A few, like Capilano and Lansdowne, are still waiting their turn. If one of these was your mall, go see it soon, because the next version is already on the drawing board.

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Photo credits

• Metropolis at Metrotown (46677227024).jpg by GoToVan from Vancouver, Canada, CC BY 2.0 (combined into a montage, cropped). Via Wikimedia Commons.
• Metropolis at Metrotown (32466797937).jpg by GoToVan from Vancouver, Canada, CC BY 2.0 (combined into a montage, cropped). Via Wikimedia Commons.
• Metropolis at Metrotown (32458694567).jpg by GoToVan from Vancouver, Canada, CC BY 2.0 (combined into a montage, cropped). Via Wikimedia Commons.
• Metropolis at Metrotown (32458694337).jpg by GoToVan from Vancouver, Canada, CC BY 2.0 (combined into a montage, cropped). Via Wikimedia Commons.
• Lougheed-town-ctr.jpg by Arnold C, Attribution (resized; cropped for the featured image). Via Wikimedia Commons.
• Oakridge Centre 2018.jpg by Wpcpey, CC BY-SA 4.0 (resized). Via Wikimedia Commons.
• Brentwood-town-ctr.jpg by Arnold C, Attribution (resized). Via Wikimedia Commons.
• Metropolis at Metrotown (46677228984).jpg by GoToVan from Vancouver, Canada, CC BY 2.0 (resized). Via Wikimedia Commons.
• Park Royal Shopping Centre Level 2 2025.jpg by Canmenwalker, CC BY 4.0 (resized). Via Wikimedia Commons.
• CF Richmond Centre Outside view 2018.jpg by Wpcpey, CC BY-SA 4.0 (resized). Via Wikimedia Commons.
• Lansdowne-ctr.jpg by Arnold C, Attribution (resized). Via Wikimedia Commons.
• Guildford town centre mall exterior.jpeg by Clee7903, CC BY-SA 4.0 (resized). Via Wikimedia Commons.
• Ctrl-city-ext.jpg by Arnold C, Attribution (resized). Via Wikimedia Commons.
• Vancouver – Pacific Centre entrance 01.jpg by Joe Mabel, CC BY-SA 3.0 (resized). Via Wikimedia Commons.
• Capilano-Mall.jpg by Arnold C, Attribution (resized). Via Wikimedia Commons.
• Coq-ctr2.jpg by Arnold C, Attribution (resized). Via Wikimedia Commons.
• Royal City Centre, New Westminster (July 23, 2026).jpg by Yuet Man Lee, CC BY-SA 4.0 (resized). Via Wikimedia Commons.