Fairview Mall pledges to improve accessibility

Pedestrians cite unsafe conditions around Fairview Mall
By Marlene Bergsma, Standard Staff
Updated 1 day ago
The owner of the Fairview Mall is pledging to work with residents to make walking to the mall safer for pedestrians.

"There has to be some way to make it better than it is now," said Jamie Chisholm, central Canada vice-president for First Capital, which owns the mall. "We will make sure that we do everything reasonably possible."

That's good news for north St. Catharines residents Jennie Collini and her daughter Benita Ann Collini, who have long been frustrated by pedestrian access to the mall.

Jennie Collini says she walks to the mall from her home on Greenmeadow Court at least once a week, and she always feels like she's taking her life in her hands.

Benita Ann Collini has been lobbying for pedestrian safety in the area of Geneva St. and Fairview Mall since 2009.

"The trouble is getting across Geneva St.," said Benita Ann Collini. "But once you do cross, you are stuck in a parking lot with no access to the front doors. It's just so dangerous."

The city is planning to install a long-awaited pedestrian-activated signal on Geneva St. just north of Ted St. this year, said Kris Jacobson, manager of transportation services for the city.

The Collinis say a pedestrian signal would be more useful at the end of Wood St., but Jacobson said there's already a light at the mall entrance only 100 metres away, so the Ted St. location makes more sense.

But even when it becomes safer to cross Geneva St., the mall parking lot is a free-for-all, say the Collinis, with busy interior roads, only short sections of sidewalk and no way for pedestrians to get safely to the mall's doors.

"There's no sidewalk," said Jennie Collini, "and cars and buses are constantly coming through here. You have to be on that road — that's the only way to get to the other side. There should be a sidewalk."

Chisholm said he was unaware of concerns about pedestrian safety.

But the city did contact the mall last year in an effort to solve the problem.

City councillors had raised the issue last spring, and asked city staff to work with Fairview Mall management to try find a solution.

"The mayor's advisory committee on accessibility reviewed the site, identifying a number of areas of concern and offered some suggestions as to how the site could be improved," wrote transportation technologist Steve Bittner in a June letter to Mark Smith, the mall's senior property manager.

Bittner invited Smith to meet with the accessibility committee "to discuss this issue in greater detail."

Diana Lecinski, the city's accessibility co-ordinator, says the mall has made great improvements to interior accessibility, but it never replied to the letter about the parking lot.

The committee has drawn "what would be the ideal solution to this for safer, better access," she said, but the committee can only advise.

The problem is the mall is private property and the city can't force improvements, said city planner Paul Chapman.

He said unless the mall comes forward with a development proposal that would allow the city to require pedestrian improvements, any changes would be voluntary.

Chisholm now says Fairview Mall is willing to do what it can.

"It's in our best interests," he said. "The last thing we want is for any kind of shopping experience to be negative. If there is a solution out there that makes sense, let's do it."

mbergsma@stcatharinesstandard.ca