The Pen Centre is situated at 221 Glendale Avenue in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. The Niagara Region’s largest shopping center located there. The Pen Centre is a well-liked location for local consumers thanks to its more than 200 shops and services. The mall also has a complex of movie theaters and a food court with a choice of dining options.
The Niagara Peninsula Centre, a single-level, out-of-town strip mall, was the project’s original name when it was constructed in 1957. In 1958, 50 retail establishments opened there, with Loblaws serving as the anchor. The mall presently boasts more than 200 stores and services after undergoing numerous renovations and additions throughout the years.
In the Niagara region, shoppers frequently traveled to The Pen Centre. With the addition of Simpson-Sears and 80 new retailers in 1966, the Pen Centre evolved into one of Canada’s biggest shopping centers.
Residents of the Niagara Region frequented The Pen Centre because it gave customers a simple one-stop shopping experience. The mall continued to operate as a strip mall with landscaped walkways in between.
However, the strip mall was covered and converted to a climate-controlled environment by September 1975 at a cost of $2 million. The mall, which has a floor area of over a million square feet and is located adjacent to Highway 406, made this change to suit customers who wanted to avoid hot or cold weather. More than 180 shops, a sizable department store, a supermarket, a ten-screen movie theater, and a number of large format anchors are all present.
The mall started an extensive $13 million refurbishment of the common area in 2011. This large-scale undertaking included 3,600 sq. upgraded floors and ceiling treatments, ft. of new skylights, a brand-new food court, etc.
These improvements gave the mall new life and made shopping there more enjoyable for everyone. The 2012 renovations gave the mall new vitality and improved the shopping experience for patrons.
The opening of a Target store in the old Zellers space in the Pen Centre was announced in 2013. However, in April 2015, a little more than a year later, Target closed all of its Canadian locations.
Later that year, Walmart purchased the Sears store’s property. In February 2018, work on a newly renovated Walmart facility got under way. On August 22, 2019, the store finally opened. In January 2018, all Sears locations in Canada were shut down.
Two large format stores, Sport Check and Mark’s, which shifted from other locations in the mall and will open in the summer of 2020 and early 2021, respectively, have been built out of the former Sears location.
In addition to Trillium College launching in the basement of this property in November 2020, the makeover also featured the installation of a food court and an outdoor meeting area. As a result of the COVID-19 epidemic environment, the remaining retail units at this location remain unoccupied.
