New Horizon Mall: $200 Million Dead Mall - Calgary's Nightmare Shopping Center - Best Edmonton Mall
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- Опубликовано: 4 ноя 2018
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Calgary's newest mall, the New Horizon Mall, is turning into a nightmare for investors, customers, and businesses. Can anything save this ghost town of a mall? Dead mall fans are having a field day on this seemingly already abandoned mall.
NHM was modeled after Pacific Mall in Toronto, but resides in prestigious Balzac, Alberta.
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It has all the warmth and charm of a totalitarian police state
@Arora Thorne ruclips.net/video/mWq15lDh8yM/видео.html ---- look at the rooms that the Barron lives in there's no Ceilings and it looks like a caged Warehouse, just like that mall
Like North Korea’s international airport. Check it out on RUclips.
@D O T S not true ! why do you think it's on RUclips-- for people to comment on
Remember... Horizon Mall loves you. Horizon Mall is watching.
@D O T S Did you just assume his gender?
Remain calm. Do not move. Your friendly Government Re-education Officers are on their way. Do not resist. We love you. Embrace Big Brother.
The most uninspiring......cold......boring.....sterile.....depressing place I could ever imagine going to - to shop! It's like jail - but with glass instead of steel bars!
the warmth and colors come from within the stores. the owners can paint and decorate as they see fit.
I'm from texas and you took the words out of my mouth looks like a hospital cold and depressing.
Ambiance really does matter.
That's every place in Canada besides Ontario, some of Quebec and Vancouver. Place is a grey, depressing dump
that chinese sense of beauty. lol
That's not a mall, that's an indoor market.
It looks like a newly built duty free area of an airport
They should make it into an airport
designed to fail
I’m a liminal space photographer and this place was heavenly! Best time I’ve had in Calgary so far. Lots of niche mom and pop shops, cool uncanny valley liminal aesthetic, and really good ice cream. You can find stuff there you probably can’t find at your generic corporate retail malls.
They also have a HUGE really well done play area and arcade for kids. Called Sky Castle. I guess one persons trash is another person’s treasure. Really excited for their basement Halloween event! Great place to support local businesses.
Horizon Mall would make a great homeless shelter....
That is a non-ironically good idea.
@@mackthehackfraud5965 I think that the owners should think outside of the box...glass-boxes that is...
That is what I said two months ago and I got in shit for saying that
@@annetteslife They should turn New Horizon Mall into a homeless shelter and then they can cross the street and go shopping at a real mall.....win-win !
They could do that, but they would need more facilities like extra kitchens and bathrooms if people are going to live there. Plus the extra security and staffto run the place 24/7. To play devil's advocate, I don't think it would go over well with the mall across the street. The other mall isn't going to want hundreds of homeless hanging around, asking for change, using the bathrooms, and not really spending much at the mall itself. It would also make a lot of customers not shop there due to concerns of safety. Over time this would result in big losses for a mall that seems to be doing pretty well. Not exactly a win-win situation for everyone.
It's all a scam, that's why it's sold to individuals rather than a large corporation. Whoever was behind this deliberately build tiny cheap cubicles, to maximise profit per space, and advertised these like apartments which the Chinese invest in, to attract this demographic. It explains why, as others pointed out, it resembles a Chinese mall. It was built next to a popular mall to make the location appear commercially viable. Once people buy, it's their problem while the developers walk away with all their money back plus profit.
It was never planned to be a workable mall.
I have to agree with that. I was wondering why they kept saying it would be Asian style when construction was announced. With that being said I think the mall would do just fine if this was 7 years ago.
Truth here.
Here in Toronto we have Pacific Mall, and it’s practically some Chinese market full of counterfeit fakes, with a similar design to this
@@xhonkeri4066 bit different .. but yea cubicles of junk
This mall looks exactly like pacific mall here in Toronto only that pacific mall is an Asian mall always busy and opened 365 days a year its considered a tourist attraction
Dense population lol big difference
My daughter and I visited Toronto and saw Pacif mall on the Waze and stopped in. We were there for at most 20 mins. It’s like a bazaar market filled with strip mall merchandise.
Tbh Pacific mall is probably bigger than this mall
Pacific mall is the first thing I thought of. Similar layout and a lot of business. Lots of cell-phone accessories, questionable electronics and copyright violated movies...
Excellent mall! Tons of stores and a huge food court. I bought a pair of Shoes from Ghost Shoes. The shoes are imaginary because I purchased it from a store called empty. All units were filled with emptyness. I would highly recommend this mall for Boxing day, you'll save tons of money. You can buy absolutely nothing, and walk out with nothing! Great way to save money.
Oh man. Thanks for the comment. It made my morning!
I dunno about that. I'm heading there tomorrow for an air guitar.
Reads like a Mad Libs 😅
No matter where you eat in the food court, you’re always hungry one minute later...
Nice, Chinese name promoting your investment in the US from China lol.
*I visited **_New Horizon_* on about 4 different occasions and have spent a few hours snooping about the building, to which it occurred to me that the *_New Horizon Mall_** is no ordinary place...* The whole building seems kind of unusual in the sense that *you really don't know where the hell you are going, or what the hell you want to see.* The drowning amount of whiteness; from the floor tiles, to the walls, ceilings, and even to the lights, when combined with the grid like layout of tiny cubicle style business condominiums--most of which lie locked and empty--one could possibly draw the analogy that _New Horizon's_ vacant retail space *resembles some sort of desolate prison or asylum.* Another thing I feel is important to mention is the fact that there are only 2 pairs of washrooms in the entire building; 1 pair downstairs on the parking garage level, and another pair upstairs in the food court area. No washrooms on the main level, which seems to be a design flaw. What's more: there are literally *no drinking fountains anywhere to be found.* Quite frankly, this is the first shopping mall I have ever been to that doesn't have public drinking fountains available in abundance. It is also the mall with the scarcest amount of public washrooms that I have visited. *_What's really going on?_*
The Great Red Spot that only two restrooms??
First page of any new commercial , municipal, educational, health facility any building people occupy will have a a legend or schedule giving the amount of toilets required which the design must provide for.
I for every 13 or 29 employees and general public I think.
Weird!
How did they even get a building permit with so few washrooms and drinking fountains?
Simple: bribe the shit out of the builders.
I guess they figured, less water fountains, less restrooms needed? 🤷♀️😂
@@EskimoCanadian44 Well, more accurately, they bribed the shit out of local and provincial authorities. If you dig, I bet that mall has it's own special zoning and made up rules.
It's an expensive flea market lol
Ben Benn just like the goodwill haha they get free shit then turn around and sell the items damn near at new price sometimes even higher then the item cost new haha
That's what we call it here in TX, a flea market
That is what I 1st thought, but this is more of a co-op. It looks like most of the spaces were bought by speculators that are unable or unwilling to lease spaces out. If I owned a shop then I would prefer owning over leasing, but not next to empty shops. They should have put in some revenue sharing model with penalties for empty spaces.
Yeah it was supposed to be like a open market. They fucked it up bad tho because a bunch of major company’s bought all the places then no one leased them because it opened in chunks. Super bad planning
Where do shops put inventory?
In their dreams of success that will never come
Your car-van in the parking lot?
Your other expensive storage space.
ZionHillCalling 。In December holidays, I sell 5 different kind of merchandise in 2’x2’x2’ box sizes, I’m not selling Dollar shop items, where is my warehouse?
It looks like they only fill them once...
That bugs me so much that they opened a tinier mall right beside an already existing mall. Idk what they were thinking, location would probably have played a key role into the success of that mall. Poor location and poor concept and I bet it’s going to be sold and turned into something else within the next 10 years.
they were thinking cheaper taxes being outside of Calgary limits and they were also thinking that Cross iron is busting at the seams on weekends. So they'd get overflow traffic as well as count on people hitting CIM and then new horizon. The location is the only thing smart about this mall.
What was wrong was that they should have (or they still should) put a time limit on leasors to open up a store front - either themselves or to a sub lease. The problem with Calgary is that a bunch of people with money went in a bought the leases with no intention of opening a store. They thought they were gonna be able to inflate and make a high profit on the fact they had some capital to invest while the guy that has a store was gonna rent from them at that inflated price. I hope the purchasers end up eating it big time so the actual store owners can come back in and lease or rent at rates that support the business model/concept of this mall.
It was supposed to be an asian mall with 80% asian stuff
Vax c
There is absolutely nothing wrong with it. Its 99% sold. Who built it is rich and sailing right now, while you try to figure what is wrong with it, he consider it a huge success.
This mall is doing EXACTLY what it was built to do - it's a giant Chinese tax scam.
Like vacouver or all of bc.
Is this a visa to Canada sceme for Chinese? The US has a visa program that gives investors more liberal visa.
BaBa it is easier to get a business visa.
@@BaBa-gq4lw Mainly tax evasion in both China AND Canada. The Chinese that invested in this are rich enough to get visas/citizenship in Canada without issue.
MiniatureMasterClass thank you
Looks like a Chinese Ghost city mall
Only concrete but no life
They should open a loctaion on Mars too
ulyssis li no judge de comunist perty, u well be asinated.
Looks like Pacific mall in Scarborough
That’s exactly what it was intended for.
What a scam.
How would you pronounce that in Chinglish? Mars on Malls?
These empty shopping malls around the world need to be made into affordable tiny clean living spaces for low income, students or elderly centered around a community center & commissary such as the food court. Better than these buildings sitting empty and becoming dilapidated. Win win for all.
That would never happen. They would tear it down first.
@@REXXSEVEN Yup, commercial space everywhere, just sitting, they'll never make it affordable to someone starting out or any other use.
How do you make money doing that?
Commercial spaces with private owners. Are you willing to buy them out with tax dollars? Remember: a city can charge an unleased space higher taxes.
@@jimroscovius many different ways. Think how do rehabs and foster homes etc make money. The grant money out there for things like this definitely Exist. I personally know how much money each patient brings into a place such as a Rehabilitation centre and it’s a lot my guy.
That's what we call a flea market. Silly Canadian
Indoor Swap Meet is what we call it here. Usually occupying old Walmarts, Targets and such when they rebuild across town.
More like a flee market.. People run away from it in panic
Exactly
Got one in Corpus Christi. I don't know what's it was once before.
@@Defender78 I'll never understand that. I love a flea market. It's great, you get tons of cool little shops.
That design is something you might find in a city China, where tourists and shoppers crowd into these tourist traps to buy assorted junk, but not in a suburban North American mall. On top of that, actually selling those tiny stores to investors who probably have no idea where Calgary is, instead of leasing them to retailers/people who actually want to do business there, hammered the nail in the coffin. If you want a lesson on how to build a dead mall from scratch, this is it.
Maybe that was the point, building small surface so they are easy to sell to small investor, even if it's abandoned, the constructor didn't loose money since he sold all those tiny shops to naive investor.
@@tiloalo
Yeah. And they technically didn't even scam anyone.
@@kaktotak8267 yeah, I can sell an apartment 400k$ if I can convince you it's worst it, even if I just bought it for 200k$...
I was able to see the plans at an engineer friend’s office before it was built. I knew it was coming but I got to see the plans ahead of construction. It didn’t look too promising as it seemed to just be a lot of shops with nothing redeeming but a lot of shops in a very large space. Malls have trees and benches and kiosks and lighting and colour. This had just lots of long somnambulant corridors with no decoration, nothing to draw you along. The stores wouldn’t be open to the walkers. They are closed off with glass walls. No open interaction between the shops and the visitors. There are very few, if any, places to stop for a rest. As an architect, I had the chance to be involved with 4 of the tenants. At the time, walking around, there was nothing close to a critical mass to draw people to the building. There was no anchor to draw people there. The roads to the building were distant and convoluted, much worse than Cross-Iron Mall next door. In the end, marketing was thin, bordering on pathetic. No one really knew if it was even open. None of the ‘live bands’ every materialized. Their 2018 Halloween bash was poorly promoted. Still, nothing to get people to go there. Covid came along and probably didn’t help. However, they had almost 2 years before that to get it up and running. We’re there really 500+ potential tenants beside an already popular mall?
Sad that so much money was put into this poorly thought out marketing disaster.
My parents used to live in Airdrie (just 10 minutes away from New Horizons) and I didn’t know how bad of shape the mall was in. My guess is that the developers thought they could compete with Cross Iron by providing a differentiated shopping experience with more unique stores. What actually happened was that Cross Iron was an already established and well traversed mall that people preferred to use over New Horizons.
Read the comments. Most, if not all don't get it. It's an "Asian" mall, which is like an organized indoor flea market. These places usually feature fake stuff or culturally exclusive products that couldn't sell for enough profit to afford rent in a real mall. Look up Pacific Mall in Markham, Ontario. The USA complained about that specific mall being a significant source of counterfeit goods.
The culture that shops at "P Mall" is looking to haggle and some knowingly purchase and wear the counterfeit junk sold there. Police raid the place once in a while to look like they care. Houses nearby warehouse and sometimes even manufacture the fake goods. Some stores are legit or mix fake/stolen goods with legit merchandise.
Good luck with that..
Todd T yeah
If seen that multiple times in Bangkok and stuff was fake and cheap AF
It's working there, but I guess not really in the western world
Was just about to comment how similar this looked in layout to Pacific Mall
Remember the "Asian" Casino Lucky Dragon in Las Vegas? Remember how well that worked out? Just saying, duplicating something elsewhere doesn't guarantee success. I say turn it into a education centre, those smaller store sizes make perfect size classrooms as per the subject. Like Mall development 101.
Isnt out liberal policies great?
And yet Pacific Mall is always full of happy shoppers. I'm pretty sure you're actually arguing that this layout works wonderfully even when it's being routinely raided by police.
Just to clarify this isn't IN Calgary. It's in Balzac between Calgary and Airdire. Its legally outside Calgary city limits and is definitely a joke. Since the day the sign went up and before construction started I said this would be tremendous failure and a horribly stupid idea. Next to cross iron they have no hope in hell. This thing is a joke.
I totally agree. I always wondered why they would build a mall right across the street from another mall. It just doesn't make sense. That's like putting 2 WalMart's across the street from one another.
Ballzack
It's spelled Balzac. Go look at a map.
its a totally different type of mall. think of it as a massive version of calgary's farmers market. The problem here is anyone with capital swept in and bought up the stalls THINKING they were gonna jack up the rent price to people that actually wanted to open a store. These small stores are gonna have really slim margins and aren't going to pay stupid rental or purchase fees. This might have worked in Calgary 10 years ago. Not now. The purchase price or rent rate needs to correct for this mall to "take off".
Katelyn Gallup Ballsack
This place looks like a flop. It's in the middle of nowhere. I though Canada had good scenery, that place looks like Fallout 4.
It's under 10 minutes away from one of the biggest cities in Canada. Hardly in the middle of nowhere, you have no idea what you are talking about.
It’s Alberta, it looks like Fallout in most places other than on the western edge where the Rockies are
@@DARKzoar0k every good Albertan has a healthy hate for calgary, starve on loosers
It looks like that because this is Winter in Alberta no leaves on trees and dormant grass that is brown at this time of year! You should see Alberta in the Summer not so Fallout 4!
If it actually had a Fallout theme it would get more business.
Looks awful. Aesthetically sterile, bland and lifeless. Go back to the malls of the 70s and 80s, fountains, plants and trees, interesting layouts and great use of materials and interesting artefacts.
GRA-EME D Back when malls had the glossy brass mirrors and actual mirrors with marble flooring, and good layouts! I am with you on that! West Edmonton Mall is starting to look boring with the renovations they are doing! It is taking the character of the Mall's 1980's history and design right out of it!
It’s like in the 90s/00s they decided to start removing all character and style from malls and turned them in to sterile boring hospital waiting rooms. However small a percentage, I believe this is a factor that added to the decline of malls. Individuality and unique style may be encouraged in people now, but public spaces are scared of both these qualities now and instead opt for generic blandness. Sad :(
retail rat-trap
This is the mall version of Calgary's half a million dollar blue ring.
You are 99% correct. It was actually a 3/4 of a million. Calgarys “art” blows!
Ouch
The mall is in Balzac, not Calgary.
I have to drive by the ring everyday to get to work and it makes me mad every time!
@Steve Hunt i agree soon they will have delivered with drones right at your location :)
This idea was doomed from the start. A mall full of 150 square foot stores. That is not retailer friendly, I've been to West Edmonton mall a few times and every time I went it was enjoyable it has a great atmosphere. I actually can't believe these investors didn't do a double take and actually think to themselves that maybe this time of mall layout or format was not a consumer friendly idea. These investors literally have millions of dollars to throw into projects and they couldn't see this was a ill advised investment its actually unfathomable.
Probably saw pacific mall in toronto and thought they could make a mint. problem is they are fucking retarded and didn't take into account that the GTA's population is more than ALL of Alberta.
Background music makes me think about thrust to weight ratios.
Struts, it's struts all the way down.
Don’t forget your staging!
I knew that tune was all to familiar.
It's the music from KSP.
Haha what is this comment referring to?
I have a good idea for that facility. I looked at the openness of it. It would be a great convention center. If you had conventions it would bring more business for the mall and more tourism for the town. But I thought it was pretty sick too with all those IKEA type stores. But they needed to have a Costco size warehouse to pickup their inventory they didn't have that. Inventory logistics were probably full of chaos to work out. Canada use that facility as a convention center to boost tourism. It sounds good to me
Its a shame that it is wasted . Could be transformed into a hotel or something
heard the same person who sold calgary this mall also sold springfield a monorail in the 90s
Is there a chance the track could bend?
@@BestEdmontonMall Not on your life, my youtube friend.
Monorail monorail monorail
But Deerfoot is still all cracked and broken.
Were you sent here by the devil?
The problem was that most of the purchasers were investors, looking for a retailer to lease to, instead of retailers
Exactly. And I hope they lose money so actual retailers can move in.
They are losing money every month. As condos there are condo fees due every month, and land taxes as well
And they keep saying "this is what people want".
Ok...
When people tell people what they want rather than listen
Why would you build a mall next to a mall? Lol
Just like a Starbucks next to a Denny's the coffee is decent there at Denny's
A 1rst world country trying to implement a 3rd world shopping experience. Lol
true.
It already had success Toronto as the Pacific Mall. This mall was modeled after it. However an oriental knock off mall having success in Toronto does not necessarily equate to success anywhere else...
third world shopping mall doesnt use that formula
you said that 😆😆😆
Excuse me! Im from a third world country (Ph) and you cant find that kind of Mall here. We are used to Malls with big atrium and stores.
With all the tiny stalls, it looks more appropriate for a flea market than a mall. Also who wants to be on display in a fish bowl?
The entire premise is bizarre.
Another thing to consider, is Alberta's economy under an NDP government with oil below 30$, and neither the Alberta or federal government doing anything about it, since they are both anti-oil. This is not the booming Alberta of a few years ago with high oil prices, essentially a negative unemployment rate, and almost every store, restaurant or other business with help wanted signs for part time, full time and management positions. It was insane. Places like Tim Hortons had to offer special benefits and incentives to keep people from quitting within three months because an employee found somewhere else to work which paid more. I would imagine under similar economic conditions, this maze of glass would have taken off "just because".
Yeah, it's just not the same rich-no-matter-what Alberta that it used to be!
Yes the economy could be a reason its dead...if not for the giant mall 50 feet away where you cannot even find parking on weekends as the mall is so busy.
@@merf64 You miss the point. The thought is that this terrible idea might have worked in the "we have more money than we know what to do with" days. Today people would rather visit an outlet mall to get better value for their dollar, which makes sense as to why it's so busy.
@@BestEdmontonMall I understand, but I don't think the economy has anything to do with their current state. The owners of this mall built and operate the Pacific Mall in Vancouver. It is the same type of mall and is one of the busiest in Canada. They only sell/lease small stores and have turned it into a asian theme mall. Maybe if this mall was located closer to downtown or had a ctrain station close to it (as most people in asian malls are elderly asian people that probably take public transit). Also the owners said when they first opened Pacific Mall, it took years for them to sell out the mall units. Hopefully that happens here, but probably is a money pit. There are enough shoppers (especially with thousands of shoppers driving by to get to Cross Iron every day). Most of the stalls would sell cheap "outlet mall" type stuff that people would be attracted too as well. I guess its the problem of not having enough stores to attract customers, and not enough customers to attract stores.
But if it was boom time like before, there wouldnt be the staff available to have a salesperson every 10 meters to run all these small stores.
Even with small stores, I bet the people at Louis Vuitton will still find a way to go ‘look’ for your size for half an hour
Nope, this is not what people want. People dont want to shop there and businesses dont want to sell there. Period.
No, not desperate investors, greedy investors, ones that are looking to lease these spaces at higher rates than Chinook Centre. Understand why it's empty now?
If it is like Australia, the corporations that own the malls WANT shops to be empty. It does great things for their tax at the end of the year.
Which is the grand irony of the concept in the first place. These shop spaces were meant for local entrepreneurs to sell their own product, not some big box retailer like HBC.
Small businesses simply don't have the kind of coin that brands like the GAP has.
It will never stand a chance next to the traditionally styled Cross Iron Mills. People aren't prepared to change their shopping style. This is Alberta the Texas of Canada and we like things big and lots of us have big money to spend at big box stores.
Not to mention CIM has colours and stuff to look at in the hallways. This thing looks like medical lab and a mall had a mentally challenged love child.
Alberta is Alberta of Canadas not some u.s comparison state get with it this is Canada very unique country do not need to compare to others
Texas is the Alberta of the US actually
Well, kind of like Texas in that we sell and produce beef, have farm land and have the oil and gas industry. But aside from that, we are uniquely different. Our conservative isn't the same as it is in the states. Even our conservative sounds socialist to them. So I didn't include that.
We also don't support and tout large weapons for things other than hunting. That sets us apart. My grandpa was from England and a farmer in the Stettler/Botha area. Sounds more British influences than Texan.
It looks like a prison more than a mall 😅😂
The premise of a mall isn't bad, but who in their right mind would open it up for investors to buy slots outright?
1. Investors are liable to sit on their slot, and most that don't will set rent higher than the mall would have. Both decrease the number of participating businesses the mall needs to survive.
2. The building can't be sold in it's entirety when it fails (see point 1) because different people own different bits.
3. They can literally never change the floor plan because people own pieces of the floor.
I guess they need the instant capital to recoup their initial investment, but the whole thing is a logistical nightmare unless they're just trying to sell and move on, in which case it will probably fail anyway.
Every time I drive past the New Horizon Mall, I always think it looks like an airport that went under years ago.
It does remind me of a hanger.
I love your videos keep up the good work ( one day I bet this channel will be big )
One of the major reasons for NHM's failure (and it is still a failure in 2022, even though there's a bit more interesting retailers in the mall now), can be seen at 3:06. The mall was meant to be a collection of owned units with interesting retailers in them. The problem is that the owners encouraged "investors" to buy units with the hope of leasing or reselling those units to actual retailers. This led to a rush of speculators buying up the units without any intention of opening a store. Great for the builder who got paid, but terrible for literally everyone else involved (existing owners, the community at large, and even the speculators who bought those units are all basically screwed).
@ 4:46 Hmmmmm......... what should I have for lunch today? I guess it's Matty's Grill again......
Funny one man. Not much selection right! What a shame. It made me fart and burp for a whole week again damn. I also think I'm addicted to it too oh no! :) :)
Carl's Jr time
Dear God that's depressing. At least pump in some music, it sounds like a museum on a Monday morning.
The announcer sounds like he's reading a thesaurus.
Josh Harkema Thesaurus Rec
New Horizon Mall parking lot is now a RV parking lot as it is 75% RV's. So happily now the parking lot being used for something.
Jeez you got so many views!! I've watched a lot of your videos and glad to see your channel is picking up
This place will make a great paintball/airsoft arena. It's just a matter of time 😏
I'll be sure to meet you there.
im in
First it'll be a Halloween store though
that's what I told my cousin walking in this empty mall... Paintball because you can see around the corners with all the glass... I also said it would be fun playing paintball against robots in this mall... I felt like we were in the Matrix looking for the Keymaker... lol
Jeremy Kinnear why wait?
I knew when they planned this mall years ago that it would fail. The transportation network in and out of this area is horrendous, I personally avoid the area because of the inability to get parked in a reasonable timeframe. Speculative buyers were had on this venture. This is like the movie “The Big Short” part 2. The city and province are in panic mode trying to think of ways to stimulate tax revenue. With the downtown vacancy rate at or over 26% and the unemployment rate at over 8% here in Calgary things look bleak. A looming over priced 2026 Winter Olympics price tag of over 5 Billion not including the sure to fallow cost over runs, we are being set up for disaster here soon! Watch for home values to eventually tank but more importantly watch the Property Tax Increases that are coming soon to a city near you. All levels of Government are running wild with no end in sight. Sorry this is not something you would hear on the local news stations.
Your right, the transportation network is horrific, the road and highway planning is a complete fail, with roads merging pointlessly and double left turn lanes that are incorrectly timed and cause more bottlenecks. Calgary has so much potential but time and time again, planners screw it up.
@tim tom LA 1984 was probably the most successful and London 2012 was decent in the way that the infrastructure they built is still being used in a meaningful way. Honestly the Olympics should just have 1-2 permalocations per continent for Summer/Winter to reuse the infrastructure, really stupid the ways cities claw over each other to suck their taxpayers dry and pad their own pockets.
BTW, The New Horizon Mall is located in a town named Balzac and not Calgary but is still very close as you can see Calgary from there.
I was there last week, it still looks brand new with about 4 stores, 1 restaurant, and one bubble tea place.
It looks more like a flea market than a mall
I think Chinese investment had something to do with this, this microstore format is not new, it was not new 10 years ago when I first started seeing stuff like this in Chinese neighbourhoods. Most of the stores I saw were low income, low volume type places too... a lot of pirate shops, second hand cell phone and computer repair stores. Maybe most of the investors were from China and they knew they could just sell it on spec to Chinese eager to invest in Canada because most of them would never even see it in person to realize how bad an idea it was.
HWPTCMW yup - looks exactly like the good old Pacific Mall in Toronto. Except that one is actually packed...
It looks like some malls I see in China.
Architectural masterpiece ... it's a freaking warehouse.
They started building it in the middle of an oil boom and it opened during the worst oil bust recession our province and city have ever experienced.
The unemployment rate in Calgary was one of the highest in the country when the mall opened, people, investors and businesses have been cutting back.
This looks like 90's chinesse malls in central and eastern europe...i saw something similar 20 years ago in Romania. Cheap glass , cheap bindings and way too far from where people actualy live !!! The only way they could bring people is to have chinesse prices for good enough quality products !
The formula for a successful mall is simple, Arby's = customers. Its not rocket science. Nobody can resist delicious curly fries.
Why do I feel like no one has considered curly fries as the solution? 🍟
And the cow nostril sandwiches with the curly fries. Boil in bag! Yummy with horsey sauce.
I miss Arby's but they shut down the closest one to me and it is now an hour drive to the next closest. They just had no customers ever since McDonald's opened up next door. Food tasted better and was cheaper but still was not enough to beat a McD's.
They do have the meats
Arbys is failing. They closed down several arbys in my area
This is what happens when you build a new mall across from a huge regular style mall.
"if you build it they will come" myth busted!
Maybe sell to more store owners and less landlords...
You nailed it!!! This is true payback to all the assholes that thought they would buy up the spaces, jack up the leases and make nothing but $$$$$$. Actual store owners that might have taken a shot, never had a chance, because of these greedy bastards!
agree, people bought up the stores fast so they could make a killing renting the spaces out. for the square feet, the rent is way to high even more a normal mall. most of the owners are charging more than double the rent of a normal mall per square feet.
Exactly!!
Those crazy Chinese investors and their hot money! What wacky high-jinks will they get up to next?
DesolationAngel101 ditto
They could use it as a future internment camp
Update: I went there last weekend and it did manage to survive Covid so far, but it’s still as bare and desolate as ever. I don’t know how they manage.
I'd love to lease a store an live in it
Like IKEA but you can live in it
Good morning horizon mall workers, let’s get this bread!
Proud Albertan and this channel is epic!!
Calgary with worse Mayor put small creative of business away.. That's maybe the reason no one dear to put anything there...
It seems like this is more of a Real Estate scam than a mall; selling the stores as condos instead of leading them like most malls do means that the property owners can't scale the mall to fit available stores by clumping the stores that are actually operating together, and it also means that the mall management looses most of their control over the shopping experience.
I hope that the mall picks up, it has a lot of potential... But without an anchor store open, and it sounds like unrealistic expectations of rent for the stores, and just too small of store spaces, it seems like it is going to fail hard before succeeding. (I have done sales out of a 10x10 at festivals and faires, it's hard to imagine doing that every day...)
Turn it into a Mega Brothel Mall
Honestly not a bad idea
Wilfred Peake within this Mega Brothel they can have condom kiosks scattered throughout the mall
the fact that you made that comment while also looking like a stereotypical sexpat is uncanny
As soon the prime minister legalize the prostitution just like pot.
'Me Choke yo hawg fo tweenty dorra"
I think it looks like Asia Pacific mall in Markham. But that mall is in a heavily populated area with a very large Asian population. This seems to be far from any real population centre.
forget the asian population, its on the edge of the largest city in canada, and within 100-120km of more population than the whole province of alberta
I'm English and that English accent from the official mall site really really annoys me.
its about 1 point away from a annoying English GPS system
Posh Cambridge twats is what I'm thinking.
Is English not English?
@@Man0fMeans what?
@@mchandler15 How does his accent differ from yours?
Reminds me of the malls I've seen in China, except over there the stores are usually organized in "districts" where you have clusters of similar merchants next to one another, e.g. garments/apparel, electronics, watches, jewelry, etc. just not sure I see that model working here though.
4:10 Silk Road is going retail LOL
It's not a mall it's a bazaar.
Is was there last Saturday and all I saw was a food court with nothing in it and why would they put it right next to cross iron mall
I just live like 10 minutes away from this mall, when i first saw it, it looks like a stadium for concerts and other big celebrations venue.
That mall is visited by the peoplekind of Canada.
imagine unironically used "peoplekind"
although it's ironically fitting for the context of canadian
I went there with my driving instructor 😶
My wife's boyfriend took me to this mall after I got my vasectomy.
Are you going to make an update video on this?
Gut the whole interior and turn it into sound stages for film/tv
One year later: It is still dead as ever with only roughly 80 stores, but with one anchor store which brings in most of the attention...
Are we going to get a update video on this, would like to see the progress maybe after the new year ?
Damm, I love this passive aggression. This video i bssically one mall dissing another mall lmao.
I'm surprised the film industry hasn't taken note. They'd have a field day filming anything & everything in there. Hell they'll typically squat on any vacant property. 😃🤣😂🤩
Here in Virginia where I live, this exact concept failed repeatedly at several locations, mostly old discount big box stores between 1978 and 1992
looks exactly like pacific mall in markham , just a newer material version
While you’re at it Calgary, get the Olympic and put yourself in debt.
Baddit Marty It’s not like any other place or any other Canadian city has lost money on the Olympics...oh.
nope they're not doing it. over half don't want it.
We voted no for that because the citizens here have common sense thank god 😂
Wait you flew from Edmonton to Calgary? Lol I think that's the real story here
Was thinking the same thing
@internet ! People do that all the time. Sometimes multiple times a week. That's why it's so strange that someone would be flying from Calgary to Edmonton
We visited a place like this in the Orlando area, called Artegon. Prophetic naming, as it was arts-heavy, and is now gone...
We really liked the concept, and the shopowners I talked with were all doing well. Net rent was quite low, fees were reasonable, and there was plenty of traffic. There was a significant tenant turnover, which can be expected when most of the shops were the artist-run direct to retail model.
This could easily be the future for mall spaces, especially for consumers like us; we prefer to touch before buying, and like the curation that a good storeowner can provide. The density of variety is also very attractive.
It's outside of Calgary's City limits, in a community called Balzac.
If it's main focus is on the Asian market, they should have built it in the city, not out in the prairies.
Might make a decent Sportsplex though. Indoor Tennis?
Harry Balzac
I would love to see it full, but I honestly dont believe it will really happen.
someone call dan bell this needs to go on dead mall series
right ?
and right across the street from a successful mall 😂😂 like who’s bright idea was that
We have the same set up in Toronto. This type of setup gives the retailer less overhead expenses. Buy special ordered puts money in the business right away and your product will be made to order. So like I said no over head expenses you have less inventory
That was comedy gold. "Going down"... brilliant editing.
The problem with Calgary is that their is way to many investers and shareholders doing nothing but expecting something in return. Things take longer to happen and old marketing strategies are on there way out as the know nothing middle men are all standing there with their hands out. Just like when real estate sellers buy up empty lots in new neighbourhoods and sit on them. Good luck filling that mall.
Get to know the difference between there and their. It always bugs me when adults use very poor grammar, it shows complete ignorance!!!
@@cjmurray5806 *shows
@@hectarsavoie8166 thank you. Makes me look ignorant! Lol! 🙄
That is true but to be fair this mall is in Balzac not Calgary
Looks like a big warehouse
It's funny that the most popular video on Best Edmonton Mall is Mall near Calgary!
I like the idea of the microstores. If they want to really get businesses in spaces there, what about lowering the rent for properties on one half of the mall and have that be more like a farmer’s market/flea market by encouraging the normal joe to set up a booth there? Then the other half could be big brand stores that pay normal or slightly higher rent to balance the cost of lowering the rent for one half of the mall.
Mall of America is still nicer then both those malls
Ok....
Now every designer can be believed when they say ‘out of stock’
The elevator voice said it best!
"Going...Down."
There are quite a few of this kind of malls in Toronto, Ontario and surrounding area for years. I think it start with the one call Pacific mall. The 200M New Horizon Mall look so much like Pacific Mall, I am just wondering why it cost so much to build when all the individual "shops" don't even have top cover.