By Pepper Parr
November 9th, 2023
BURLINGTON, ON
This is not good news.
This is a community location that is falling apart. There are “plans” for huge developments; there is a new ice rink and community space under construction.
A reader told us this morning that they were in the Shoppers Drug Mart at the Lakeside Plaza (east end of the city)
We were just at the Shoppers Drug Mart located at Lakeside Plaza to mail a package. We know the Post Master. He informed us that the post office at this location will be closing Nov 23 and the entire store will be closing Nov 30.
The shelves were bare and empty with stock being delivered to the new location at BurlOak and Rebecca which will open sometime soon.
There WILL NOT be a postal outlet at this location. Residents will have to go to the New Street and Appleby Shoppers Drug for mail, stamps, etc.
Too bad for those nearby who used to walk to the plaza for necessities and now we will have to drive, taxi, or bus.
Not the vision Burlington had in mind to encourage people to walk or cycle to nearby shops.
Truly sad to see what is happening to this plaza. In the 1970’s it was an extremely popular mall that had two restaurants, an LCBO, a hardware store, an Eames department store, as well as a theatre and countless other stores. With the opening of the new mall at Burloak and Rebecca in Oakville the Shoppers is moving there, and next door is a new Food Basics that is much cleaner and more modern than the Lakeside facility.
The only thing more horrific than the loss of businesses are the developers’ plans for this site. Left to them it will be overrun with more banal, tasteless and aesthetically dull twenty and thirty storey condos erected, purportedly, to help Ontario deal with its housing affordability crisis.
A lot of us forget that when the City increases property taxes on the places where we live the taxes also go up on the places where we shop and work. Businesses either pass those costs onto us in terms of higher prices and/or lower wage increases, or they simply go under. I drive by this plaza quite often and I’m amazed that with all the high-rise towers near by that it’s not more vibrant.
There is a pharmacy (Pharmasave I think) at the No Frills Plaza on Brant Street. There was a post office in the pharmacy there for years, always busy. Many seniors and others walk there. Not long ago, the post office was closed permanently and a sign directed customers to the Shoppers Drug Mart at Mapleview Mall. Hardly nearby enough for those walking, and to a competitor pharmacy to boot.
Of course it seems that in Ontario, Shoppers Drug Mart and Doug Ford’s government are very much tied together, and much has been written about how Shoppers gets early access to COVID vaccines, with some other pharmacies not getting any at all, and recall Shoppers charging money for test kits when they were supposed to be given out for free. I saw the other day a meme making the rounds on social media of Doug Ford pictured as the “Shoppers Drug Mart Employee of the Year.”