Quote:
Originally Posted by Cole436
Does anyone have any pictures of what Chinook looked like before the reno's? I only have vague memories.
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Which renos? It has changed a lot over the years. It started out as two separate malls, the north one had Sears, and the south one had Woodward's. Eventually, the two malls grew together, and have kept growing.
When I moved to Calgary in the late 70s, the two halves of the mall were still semi-separate. You could walk from one side to the other upstairs, but on the main floor, you had to go outside and cross a small road that connected the east and west parking lots.
http://www.chinookcentre.com/en/cent...urHistory.aspx
This is an aerial view of the original mall:
There's a semi-circle of houses across the street from the mall. That's still there, west of the mall across 5th Street. Macleod Trail is the road in the lower right of the picture. 60th Avenue is the road in the upper right corner (which, I believe is the road that originally separated the two malls).
At the time (around 1960), this was pretty much the southern edge of the city.
Woodward's and the Woodward's Food Floor occupied most of the west side of the mall, and I have no idea what stores were on the east side (the Bowling Alley was there from the beginning). When Woodward's sold off its grocery business in the 80s, Safeway took over the Food Floor (now the space occupied by all the stores from Old Navy to Jacob), and when Woodward's went bankrupt, the Bay took over the space, and have occupied it since.
In that photo of the original mall, the north end of the mall on the west side is the north end of The Bay today; and the south end of the west side is Old Navy today. The south end of the east side is now Chapters; and the north end of the east side is (I believe) now The Gap (might be Victoria's Secret).
The first expansion of the mall added the office tower, theatre, and food court. There used to be an escalator in front of where The Gap is that brought you up there. Sport Chek is now in the former theatre space, and a very small portion of the current food court is where the original food court was.
I'm actually surprised that if you look at the satellite view of Chinook today, you can still identify the original mall buildings. Although, I guess it shouldn't be too surprising since, other than the theatre, most of the significant changes have been to the northern half of the mall.