When growing up as a Maple Leafs fan, my favourites were Mike Palmateer and Darryl Sittler. The mecca of hockey, in my opinion, was Maple Leafs Gardens.
For awhile a grocery magnate named Steve Stavros owned the hockey club; now MLG is a grocery store as it opens on Wednesday, Nov. 30 in this change-of-use.
Rock concerts, pro wrestling and boxing, and many other entertainment events were hosted by the Gardens. The Air Canada Centre opened in 1999.
Here's a story from The Toronto Star about the Gardens' transformation.
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Dana Flavelle Toronto Star, Business Reporter
What would the late Harold Ballard think?
His beloved Maple Leaf Gardens may look the same from the outside more than a decade after the Toronto Maple Leafs National Hockey League team abandoned its home of 68 years.
But inside the iconic arena that hosted eight Stanley Cup championships, Depression-era dance marathons, Beatles concerts and Trudeau-mania, the curmudgeonly former owner might be startled by its dramatic transformation.
On Wednesday, the iconic hockey shrine will reopen its doors for the first time since 1999, but as a supermarket, clothing store and LCBO outlet.
Not just any supermarket, an urbane food emporium worthy of the sophisticated tastes of Toronto’s booming downtown condo-dwellers.
From the few crumbs of information Loblaw Cos. Ltd. has dropped so far, the store will house a sushi bar, stone bread-baking oven, 100 pound wheel of Stilton cheese, handcrafted chocolate and open kitchen. The Gardens will be unlike any other store in Loblaw’s 1,200-store empire.
“You have to have the right product mix. You can’t sell suburban products in the downtown core. People aren’t going to do their week’s worth of shopping. They’re shopping daily, or two or three times a week. They’re buying fresh. Looking for organic,” said John Archer, a retail consultant with J.C. Williams Group Inc. in Toronto.
“The market is skewed a little bit younger. It’s also the attitude. Eating healthy. Looking after yourself. It’s not age-related. It can be the funky 50-year-old who still dresses like they’re 25 and wants to buy Joe Fresh,” Archer added.
Like other food retailers, Loblaw was looking for a way to get into the downtown core when the Gardens came on the market.
A condo boom was fuelling a population explosion. Having shrunk to 40,000 residents by the 1970s during the flight to the suburbs, the city’s inner core has soared to 100,000 people, says Tony Hernandez, chair of Ryerson University’s Centre for the Study of Commercial Activity.
And more are coming.
“The density has gone crazy in the last five years,” says Anthony Stokan, retail consultant with Anthony Russell Inc. in Toronto.
Unlike Manhattan, where there’s a small Korean grocer on every corner, Canada’s food distribution business is controlled by a handful of large players, Stokan noted. Every one of them — Metro, Sobey’s and regional player Longo’s — has opened downtown stores in recent years, he said.
Finding a suitable urban site is more challenging than in the suburbs. The Gardens presented even more than the usual number of headaches for prospective developers.
At one point, the arena appeared destined to become a white elephant.
Vacated in 1999 by the hockey team for more modern quarters in the Air Canada Centre, its owner Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment seemed to have few options.
Condo developers were stymied by the city’s decision to declare the Gardens’ domed roof a heritage feature. And a rival hockey club owner, Eugene Melnyk, was rejected as a potential competitor to MLSE’s Air Canada Centre.
Loblaw walked away from a proposed deal in 2003, declaring the price too rich for its appetite. Home Depot withdrew a rival offer around the same time.
Loblaw and MLSE were able to strike a deal the following year that would see the Gardens turned into a giant superstore that carried both groceries and general merchandise. The Gardens’ legions of fans were heartbroken that the plan wouldn’t include a skating rink.
Then Loblaw’s plans stalled.
The company became distracted by a market share war with Wal-Mart, which had begun adding full supermarkets to its general merchandise stores. Loblaw had gone on the offensive introducing its Real Canadian SuperStore format to Ontario. The stores, which carried both food and general merchandise, had done well in Western Canada. But they failed to meet expectations in Ontario.
The company stopped building them.
There were other problems as well, including rumours the cost of restoring the Gardens to its former glory was running far higher than Loblaw had anticipated.
Then in 2009, Loblaw struck an innovative deal with nearby Ryerson University that would see the Gardens house a new NHL-sized arena above the supermarket.
Partnering with Ryerson, which badly needed a new student athletic centre and arena for its hockey team, silenced the critics and brought in government agencies to help finance the Gardens reconstruction.
The deal qualified for a federal infrastructure grant. Ottawa committed to provide up to $20 million of the $60 million Ryerson would need to build its share of the facilities.
Loblaw agreed to help raise another $20 million for the school, seeding the pot with a $5 million donation. Ryerson students would raise the other $20 million through a special $126 a year student fee.
Loblaw would build a smaller 70,000 square foot store, with a Joe Fresh outlet and LCBO.
The compromise won kudos.
Tim Morawetz, who documented the Gardens’ architectural features in his book Art Deco Architecture in Toronto, was a member of Friends of the Gardens, a group that fought valiantly to preserve it as a working arena.
“It would have been so special for all Canadians to be able to continue to experience the magic of the ice surface,” Morawetz said. Recognizing that wasn’t possible, he said, this is the next best thing. Loblaw has preserved its soaring art deco features and modern style, he said, while Ryerson has reintroduced a skating surface.
Loblaw says it has taken care to “celebrate the heritage of the building” inside the store as well. What that means remains to be seen when the building is opened to the public for the first time in more than a decade.
Former Toronto mayor John Sewell was also a Friend of the Gardens. Last month, he was invited by Ryerson to tour its share of the facilities.
Sewell says he stood on the future ice rink under the iconic dome at Maple Leaf Gardens last month and felt “tingly.”
But the Gardens isn’t out of the woods yet. MLSE is in litigation with Ryerson over the school’s apparent plans to use the rink for more than student hockey games.
That case is before the courts.
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