It’s Wayback Wednesday, sponsored by Jamie Lockwood, broker/owner of Sutton Group Muskoka Realty!
If at first glance you thought this is the site of the current Huntsville Place Mall, think again.
At one time, an enclosed mall was proposed in Huntsville’s west end. The mall, planned for today’s Crescent Road area, was never developed.
In this photo, the former Ideal Algonquin (later Algonquin Automotive and Hidden Hitch) can be seen in the background.
Huntsville Place Mall opened at the other end of town, on King William Street, in 1986.
If you can fill in any other details, add them in the comments!
See more Wayback Wednesday photos here.
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Douglas Millikin says
This was a proposed Mall site on the old Beaver Lumber property across the road from Mobile Marine .
They had to backfill a substantial amount to raise level above the flood plain. Has been dormant ever since.
Brian Tapley says
Picture too small to really tell much but there was at one time supposed to be a mall at the south end of town more or less across from where Mobile marine is now. It never came to more than a bit of fill. Too small in area.
Allensville boasted a “mall” more in name than fact for a few years where the storage yard is now. A bit of a tongue in cheek poke at the Huntsville place mall.
One has to notice that the Huntsville Place mall is becoming more and more a strip mall, with no interior mall courtyard. I suppose this gives them more actual rentable retail space and they don’t need to keep the public interior maintained. It is a far cry from what it was when it first opened about 1986
Peter Brown says
This property had a large sanitary sewer running right through the middle of it.
Somewhat difficult to build a mall over a deep sewer system.
And I don’t think anyone wanted to pay to relocate it.
Brenda Begg says
To Brian Tapley: I agree; Huntsville Place Mall is a far cry from what it used to be. No public washrooms now! Nowhere to sit (I think it would be perfectly safe to put back the benches). No greenery. No eateries. Sad.
Claude Doughty says
The property in the picture is not the one on the north side of Main Street west across from the marina. It is south of the equipment rental business on the east side of Crescent Road.
It was zoned for the new mall use but that was changed when Council decided to put a new mall where it is today.