page_title: Port Place Shopping Centre
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Port Place Shopping Centre / History
caption_attribution_description: English: A map of Harbour Park Mall prior to renovations.
context_page_description: Port Place Shopping Centre is a hybrid indoor/outdoor shopping mall located in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada. It previously had a total retail floor area of 145,000 square feet prior to partial demolition of the mall space, which reduced its floor space to approximately 134,478 square feet prior to the addition of new retail and office space.
context_section_description: Port Place began as a two-store strip mall that was built in 1952 on the site of the former Nanaimo Sports Grounds in the downtown area, with Simpsons-Sears and Safeway as the original anchor tenants.
  The facility was expanded in 1967 by attaching an indoor mall (the second one in Nanaimo, after Northbrook Mall), which was then named Harbour Park Mall. Safeway moved into a larger location in the newly added mall portion, while Fields opened in the former Safeway space and Cunningham Drug (which was bought out by Shoppers Drug Mart in 1971) joined the tenant list.
  Harbour Park underwent expansion again in the early 1980s with the construction of more retail space. In the following years, Safeway and Shoppers Drug Mart closed their locations at the mall and Sears was relocated to Rutherford Mall in north Nanaimo. Thrifty Foods took over as the supermarket anchor in 1988, London Drugs opened a location next to Thrifty Foods, and after a period of use as a bingo hall, the former Sears space was divided and renovated to accommodate Liquidation World, a fitness gym, and other retail spaces.
  In 1996, Liquidation World and most of the other businesses in the old Sears location were forced to vacate their spaces to allow the Great Canadian Casino to move in. The only business that was not forced to move was Subway, which had a long-term lease at its then-location.
caption: A map of Harbour Park mall prior to renovations
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