KIRKLAND — As residents of Kirkland walked in and out of the Bureau En Gros, a sign taped the doors told a story that spells trouble for the mall that it’s in: the store is scheduled to close for good March 21, meaning that the Rio-Can Centre will lose one of its most important anchor stores.
“This is probably what draws people,” said Cindy Desparois, a Kirkland resident who was shopping for school supplies with her daughter. “If it’s not here everything is just going to shut along with it.”
When the big-box office store leaves, it will make 10 empty storefronts in the mall, which opened around 15 years ago.
“We’ve always lived here, and when it opened it was great, all these little shops. and now we don’t come here for anything anymore,” she said.
“There’s nothing.”
Kirkland Mayor Michel Gibson said that it’s difficult for someone in his position to control demographics.
“You cannot control this as a municipality. It’s sad, it’s definitely sad,” Gibson said.
He added that the long-awaited 440 urban boulevard would have helped business at the mall, which used to draw customers as far as Vaudreuil.
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“They’re independently self-sufficient over there. Why come to the West Island?” he asked rhetorically.
Now the Vaudreuil-area is one of Canada’s fastest-growing areas, and its retail landscape reflects that.
“Vaudreuil is an expanding city.
You have more and more households, that’s why business is good — population,” said Jacques Nantel, a marketing professor at HEC Montreal.
In Kirkland, which has a stable population, “in that mall there were some big anchors, and some of those anchors are closing their doors, and the whole mall is being shattered.”
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Former Kirkland resident Robert Tonge said he moved to St-Lazare because the mall was going to make the neighbourhood too busy.
Driving through the mostly vacant parking lot, he said he was shocked.
“I can’t believe how the stores are all closing,” he said.
“A lot of people came shopping here from Vaudreuil and St-Lazare, and now that they have the other shopping centre out there, we hardly come back here anymore.”
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