Best Shopping District: CF Chinook Centre
Chinook Centre is well-known throughout Calgary as the city’s largest shopping mall, with more than 250 stores to its name. Anchored around three large stores – Hudson’s Bay, Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue – you will find a mixture of luxury clothing, restaurants and mid-priced retailers to browse through, whether you’re there for an hour or a full day. Inside, you’ll find countless amenities like H&M, Chapters, a bowling alley, a 900-seat dining hall and the 16-screen Scotiabank Theatre - all accessible from a relatively new pedestrian overpass leading from the C-Train. Chinook Centre has proven to be popular among Calgarians because it’s the one place you can go in the city for anything you need: food, clothes, electronics, linens, kitchenware, family-friendly activities, you name it.
Opening its doors back in the early 1960s, the Chinook Centre that you see today is based around two major renovations: a $300 million re-design in 2000 which moved out some of the smaller, local businesses for larger format retailers and then the additional 180,000 square foot two-level expansion in 2010, adding another 60 retailers. Today, Chinook Centre continues to work on and entertain plans to potentially add as much as 2.3 million square feet of retail and mixed-use space. For more information on stores at Chinook Centre and their future building plans, check out their directory here.
FIRST RUNNER UP: INGLEWOOD
SECOND RUNNER UP: 17TH AVENUE SW