Dixie Outlet Mall in Mississauga has just launched a drive-in movie theater that will run for three Saturdays starting on September 12, 2020. Tickets are available for $5 and you have to purchase in advance. It's first come, first park. And there only 100 parking spots available.
Here are the event links:
All of the proceeds from ticket sales will be donated to the New Haven Learning Centre, which is a group that works to positively change the lives of people with autism, and other related disorders. For more information about the Dixie Drive-In, click here.
And for those of you who are curious, the answer is yes, a minor variance application was required in order to allow this "pop-up."
Sidewalk Labs recently ran a thought experiment where they came up with 5 possible scenarios for the future of retail and, more specifically, what they may mean for our streetscapes. You can read all about them here, but my mind lumps them into 3 broad categories.
First, there’s the temporary/pop-up/independent scenario. This one is all about flexibility and speed. It’s about web-first retailers who don’t have, need or want permanent stores and about empowering small scale business owners. This makes sense. The internet has decentralizing forces.
The second one takes retail in the opposite direction. It’s about going all in on physical stores; upsizing them and making them even more over the top and Instagram-able. This one also seems intuitive given that we’re already seeing this trend with malls. Many/most are dying and the surviving ones are trying to go as high end as possible.
The last scenario takes vacant and underutilized retail on the fringe and turns them into “digital dispensaries.” This one is entirely utilitarian and void of any streetscape/urban considerations. It’s about autonomous electric vehicles picking up your goods through drive-thrus and on-demand drones dispatching your toilet paper after you hit that Amazon Dash Button.
This feels like a good list. I think you could argue that the writing is on the wall for all of these scenarios.
Photo by Lance Anderson on Unsplash