Luxury shopping? Lifestyle destination? This is what it's like inside Montreal's newest supermall
CBC
Want to know more about Royalmount? Find out when it opens to how much parking costs here.
A little less than 48 hours before the first shoppers were expected to start spending money inside the new Royalmount shopping mall, the place still looked like a construction site.
Workers were drilling, digging, installing and hammering away on Tuesday morning as Andrew Lutfy, the real estate and retail mogul behind the project, led a group of journalists and influencers on a tour.
Lutfy, wearing a smile and a pair of Tom Ford shoes, stood in the mall's main atrium, in front of storefronts which will soon be home to Tiffany and Co. and Yves-Saint-Laurent, among other luxury brands. He pitched Royalmount as a retail haven, a destination for curious families, a culinary hotspot and a cure for the loneliness epidemic.
"What we're providing is a physical canvas that is master-planned — and I'm gonna say genius master-planned — that brings people together," he said, standing in the mall's main atrium.
But will people come? Royalmount has drawn criticism and pushback from local officials who warn that it will make traffic worse in the area, where it is already nearly at a constant slowdown on the Décarie and Metropolitain Expressways.
Lutfy isn't worried. If they don't want to contend with traffic, he said shoppers can take the Metro to De La Savane station and walk over the highway via a $50-million footbridge to get to the mall's second floor.
When they walk inside the air-conditioned interior, there's a Starbucks, a Zara, a Sports Experts.
On the first floor, there's a Gucci outlet, a Rolex store and a Balenciaga boutique.
Experts say it's risky to open a mall selling luxury products at a time when interest rates have risen quickly and people have less disposable income. "People are having a hard time and luxury brands are also having a hard time," said Benoit Duguay, a professor at the Université de Québec à Montreal's school of management services. "It's not the best time in retailing."
Lutfy sees it differently. The mall, he said, is meant to be an experience, a chance to bask in what he calls an "ecosystem." Sometime in 2026, he said, Royalmount will also be home to an aquarium. He encourages families to come to the mall by Metro or by car, sit outdoors in the mall's courtyard and "enjoy the beauty … even if they don't spend a dime."
But dimes become dollars and Lutfy says he has statistics to show they will be spent at Royalmount. Lutfy claimed two-thirds of all Generation Z teens aspire to make a luxury purchase in the next 12 months and that 50 per cent already have made one by age 15.
"That's the amazing thing about these 15-year-olds, I don't know where they get their money. I don't know if they've got side-hustles, I don't know if they took their mother's vintage purse or sold it, took the cash and spent it. They're very industrious," he said.
For those who don't want to buy a Rolex or a Gucci handbag, there are other offerings — like Garage, Lutfy points out. He is the owner of Dynamite Group, which owns, among other retail offerings, Garage.
