At the risk of sounding like a broken record, months after the dust have settled, the new University Heights Mall is shaping up to be an ok hub for some operations to exist. As an area where nearly all the banks are represented, I can respect that. Folks with multiple accounts at different banks can simply walk across the street. The food scene remains the same: corporate and sad, and as for who else will occupy the space opposite this expansion, only time will tell.

There’s a pit where the former library used to be, the other strip mall is under construction, and the rest? They are hardly 100% done. I even sounded off on my what I thought during an interview on Kathryn Marlow’s This is Vancouver Island a few years back. Although that segment didn’t make the final cut, I was glad to get that off my chest, and instead we focused on was What Else Is As Iconic As London Drugs? (courtesy of CBC Radio).

And we were talking about what makes British Columbia unique, and not just the island. No, I’m not talking about wanting to be stuck in the same era where every adventure on Netflix’s Stranger Things must happen (because the old digs were reputed to be haunted!), but small is better than big.

When news broke that the block occupied by this shopping complex had been sold to an American firm, my heart sank. There used to be smaller brunch places and more of a sense of community here, back when Gauntlet Games occupied the space. They moved to another mall, which at least can’t be rebuilt from the ground up. For the mall I can walk to that’s five blocks away, it was home. There was a comic book shop, an arcade, a gym, a video game rental store, a poster framing place, and even a place to file your income tax!

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