{"id":16371,"date":"2025-12-08T09:03:39","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T09:03:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/mic-macs-new-retailers-enhance-shopping-experience\/"},"modified":"2025-12-08T09:03:39","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T09:03:39","slug":"mic-macs-new-retailers-enhance-shopping-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/mic-macs-new-retailers-enhance-shopping-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"Mic Mac’s New Retailers Enhance Shopping Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Retail<\/a><\/p>
\n<\/p>\n

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The stars are aligning these days for Mic Mac Mac Mall<\/strong> in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Atlantic Canada\u2019s largest enclosed shopping mall, located in the Halifax Regional Municipality.<\/p>\n

Woody the Talking Christmas Tree is back for the holiday season drawing crowds to the shopping centre.<\/p>\n

Several new retailers have joined the tenant mix including The Moose Shop with more to come in the near future.<\/p>\n

And redevelopment plans will in the future transform the iconic real estate property which is operated by Cushman & Wakefield.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Photo:
Photo: Mic Mac Mall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Photo:
Photo: Mic Mac Mall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tia Hathaway, the mall\u2019s Guest Services Supervisor,<\/strong> 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we didn\u2019t 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,\u201d said Hathaway.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Tia
Tia Hathaway<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cThe 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\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo this is his fifth year back. We have a lot of the same voices working with us with Woody, don\u2019t dispel too much of the magic. Most of them are from radio or television. He\u2019s just compelling. It doesn\u2019t matter the age, it doesn\u2019t matter the background, it doesn\u2019t matter the language. You know, Woody just brings that child. He brings the magic, but he just brings that childlike character out in everybody.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe 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\u2019s quite something to see when somebody who doesn\u2019t expect Woody to say, Hey, come on in and have a chat with me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Photo:
Photo: Mic Mac Mall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Photo:
Photo: Mic Mac Mall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Photo:
Photo: Mic Mac Mall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Lori Stuart, Director of Leasing for the mall,<\/strong> <\/strong>said the momentum has been good with leasing activity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had a number of tenants that have opened this year. We\u2019ve 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,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNew stores that have recently opened would include Miniso, Lovissa, global brand Specsavers. We\u2019ve also expanded Ardene into over 15,000 square feet. Later this year, we\u2019ll welcome Bourbon Street Grill, and they\u2019ll go into our food court, offering the customers a more expanded offering, and it\u2019s already a highly productive food court. So we\u2019re looking forward to welcoming them to our food court, which will round it out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n
\"Lori
Lori Stuart<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re 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\u2019ve 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\u2019re up about 6% over last year in our traffic and our sales per square foot has grown tremendously, and we\u2019re at $636 right now, which is up 7% over last year. And it\u2019s just reflective of a strong shopper engagement and a good, healthy balance tenant mix for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stuart said that in the next few months the mall will be able to announce more tenants.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe momentum is not slowing down, and we\u2019ve got several leases in the pipeline right now that will just further diversify our tenant mix. And we\u2019re, we\u2019re pretty excited about what 2026 will bring for us. So it\u2019s been good. Been healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Photo:
Photo: Mic Mac Mall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mitch Eliasson, Senior Vice President, Leasing <\/strong>at Page Property Management,<\/strong> 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a long-term project, but we\u2019re still very bullish on it. We\u2019ve been advised by the city that we should have final municipal approvals in place by the end of this calendar year. So obviously that\u2019s creeping up on us quickly, but we\u2019re 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,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe 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\u2019s 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,\u201d said Eliasson.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Mitch
Mitch Eliasson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cSo 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re 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\u2019ve got some we\u2019ve got a lot of interest already in that ground level space, and we\u2019re 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\u2019ve gone to their appointments.\u201d<\/p>\n

More from Retail Insider:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"Retail<\/a><\/p>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The stars are aligning these days for Mic Mac Mac Mall in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Atlantic Canada\u2019s largest enclosed shopping mall, located in the Halifax […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}