The stars are aligning these days for Mic Mac Mac Mall in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Atlantic Canada’s largest enclosed shopping mall, located in the Halifax Regional Municipality.
Woody the Talking Christmas Tree is back for the holiday season drawing crowds to the shopping centre.
Several new retailers have joined the tenant mix including The Moose Shop with more to come in the near future.
And redevelopment plans will in the future transform the iconic real estate property which is operated by Cushman & Wakefield.
The holiday season began in spectacular fashion in mid November with The Wake Up Woody event, a festive pyjama party, inviting attendees of all ages to come dressed in their favourite PJs.
Mic Mall has partnered with The Moose Shop this holiday season to sell out Woody merchandise. To celebrate the partnership, it came out with two collaborative items, a key chain and a hockey puck featuring Woody and the Mooseheads mascot Hal.
Tia Hathaway, the mall’s Guest Services Supervisor, said the story of Woody dates back to 1981 when the mall originally brought Woody, the talking Christmas tree, to life. He looked much different back then than he does today. Many upgrades. He was retired in 2006 leading to a very, very sad time around the mall.
“And we didn’t realize the impact that Woody had on the community until he was gone . . . He was retired for a few years. Every year they would bring them back into the news, especially around Christmas time, and say, you know, we want Woody to come back and all that kind of good stuff. And when we were bought in 2021, one of the main objectives was to bring Woody, the talking Christmas tree, back,” said Hathaway.
“The animatronic version of him now is much more palatable. His face is a lot more friendlier looking, more childlike, without being babyish. And since 2021, he’s been back. And, the impressions and the likes and shares and the talk shows that have mentioned Woody on them, we would never have thought that made this type of an impression.
“So this is his fifth year back. We have a lot of the same voices working with us with Woody, don’t dispel too much of the magic. Most of them are from radio or television. He’s just compelling. It doesn’t matter the age, it doesn’t matter the background, it doesn’t matter the language. You know, Woody just brings that child. He brings the magic, but he just brings that childlike character out in everybody.
“He is statuesque in the centre court of our shopping centre at three levels high. And then all of a sudden, Woody will start talking to you. It’s quite something to see when somebody who doesn’t expect Woody to say, Hey, come on in and have a chat with me.”
Lori Stuart, Director of Leasing for the mall, said the momentum has been good with leasing activity.
“We’ve had a number of tenants that have opened this year. We’ve had about 30 plus lease transactions in 2025, north of 90,000 square feet of activity, and that includes tenant renewals, new deals, as well as the number of retailers investing in their stores with renovations,” she said.
“New stores that have recently opened would include Miniso, Lovissa, global brand Specsavers. We’ve also expanded Ardene into over 15,000 square feet. Later this year, we’ll welcome Bourbon Street Grill, and they’ll go into our food court, offering the customers a more expanded offering, and it’s already a highly productive food court. So we’re looking forward to welcoming them to our food court, which will round it out.
“We’re also very proud to partner with local names such as the Steele Wheels Museum and the Halifax Mooseheads, which is a Canadian junior hockey team as they’ve opened a retail shop within the shopping centre. The early customer response has been pretty overwhelming, driving new interest in the centre and increased traffic. So year to date, we’re up about 6% over last year in our traffic and our sales per square foot has grown tremendously, and we’re at $636 right now, which is up 7% over last year. And it’s just reflective of a strong shopper engagement and a good, healthy balance tenant mix for sure.”
Stuart said that in the next few months the mall will be able to announce more tenants.
“The momentum is not slowing down, and we’ve got several leases in the pipeline right now that will just further diversify our tenant mix. And we’re, we’re pretty excited about what 2026 will bring for us. So it’s been good. Been healthy.”
Mitch Eliasson, Senior Vice President, Leasing at Page Property Management, who is with the Rank Group, which represents the ownership of the mall property, said a redevelopment plan will see upwards of 2,500 residential units, 400 senior living units, 100,000 square feet, plus an A Class office space, an improved and major transit terminal hub that will get refurbished by the city.
“It’s a long-term project, but we’re still very bullish on it. We’ve been advised by the city that we should have final municipal approvals in place by the end of this calendar year. So obviously that’s creeping up on us quickly, but we’re hoping we will receive that so we can actually get to work, in which case we do intend to start breaking ground on the first phase of this project in the first half of 2026,” he explained.
Another major project will be getting The Bay space back, which is about 150,000 square feet spread over two levels within the mall itself.
“We view that as a tremendous opportunity for the mall. It was not exactly a surprise, per se when we found that The Bay was leaving. It’s more a matter of when than if, and we already had some ideas in mind of what we wanted to do when that moment arose,” said Eliasson.
“So now that we officially have it back, we had to put a little bit more thought and consideration to exactly what that would look like. So we hired a design firm out of Montreal who specializes in retail and is very creative to start looking at The Bay box and make it fit the vision of what we had in mind. And as part of that, it kind of became a jumping off point for some other things you wanted to look at. That included doing some just broader exterior esthetic improvements to tie it all together as we modernize that box, and also looking at our interior areas as well to how we differentiate some of those areas, which then led to conversations about improving some of our common areas, especially some of our main courts within the mall that tend to have multiple open levels above natural light and evening space above as well.
“We’re looking at how to improve some of our activity courts, event courts, programming, that type of thing. In terms of The Bay and the 150,000 square feet, the first level we intend to keep as retail. We’ve got some we’ve got a lot of interest already in that ground level space, and we’re hoping to have some really exciting announcements to make in the next couple of months on that end, and then on the second floor, we intend to focus on turning into a professional service wing and focusing on medical and other kind of professional services that will help bring clientele into the mall, and then hopefully spend some more time in the mall making purchases elsewhere after they’ve gone to their appointments.”
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