Plaza Alexis-Nihon shopping centre on a rainy evening in Montreal.
This three-storey shopping centre, at the corner of Sainte Catherine's and Atwater, is the main shopping centre for the extreme western end of downtown Montreal, and it straddles the border between downtown Montreal and the upscale suburb of Westmount.
It's actually more like a large-ish neighbourhood shopping centre than it is a "destination" mall the way that, say, Place Montreal Trust would be. The largest stores in the mall, Zellers discount department store, the Canadian Tire, the IGA supermarket, and Pharmaprix (Shoppers Drug Mart in Quebec), are the same sorts of stores that you'd find in a suburban neighbourhood mall like, say, Faubourg de L'Ile in Pincourt, just arranged over three storeys into a more compact area. The only exception for large surface stores here may be Sports Experts, which is a fair bit larger than an equivalent sports store at a smaller mall.
The McDonald's in Alexis-Nihon opened in 2002, replacing a McDonald's just across the street.
This mall is also a magnet for Anglophone Quebec CEGEP (Quebec junior colleges) students. as it's directly connected, via the Atwater Metro station, to Dawson College, just across the street to the north.
For a better view of the McCafé, see the night shot I took of two police cars outside the Atwater side entrance to the plaza when I visited Montreal in July.
Plaza Alexis-Nihon shopping centre on a rainy evening in Montreal.
This three-storey shopping centre, at the corner of Sainte Catherine's and Atwater, is the main shopping centre for the extreme western end of downtown Montreal, and it straddles the border between downtown Montreal and the upscale suburb of Westmount.
It's actually more like a large-ish neighbourhood shopping centre than it is a "destination" mall the way that, say, Place Montreal Trust would be. The largest stores in the mall, Zellers discount department store, the Canadian Tire, the IGA supermarket, and Pharmaprix (Shoppers Drug Mart in Quebec), are the same sorts of stores that you'd find in a suburban neighbourhood mall like, say, Faubourg de L'Ile in Pincourt, just arranged over three storeys into a more compact area. The only exception for large surface stores here may be Sports Experts, which is a fair bit larger than an equivalent sports store at a smaller mall.
The McDonald's in Alexis-Nihon opened in 2002, replacing a McDonald's just across the street.
This mall is also a magnet for Anglophone Quebec CEGEP (Quebec junior colleges) students. as it's directly connected, via the Atwater Metro station, to Dawson College, just across the street to the north.
For a better view of the McCafé, see the night shot I took of two police cars outside the Atwater side entrance to the plaza when I visited Montreal in July.