At the height of the cross-border shopping era, it was a major destination point for Ontario residents eager to head stateside. It will soon be all gone.

Boulevard Mall, located just north of Buffalo in the Town of Amherst, New York, has shut down permanently following years of declining sales and store closures, hastened along by COVID when it wasn’t allowed to open for months.

Operating since 1962, when it became the first indoor shopping centre in the Buffalo area, it took its name from its location on Niagara Falls Boulevard. It was home to such big-name American stores as Macy’s, JCPenney, Dick’s, Sears and was a convenient attraction for Canadian shoppers because of its proximity to the border.

Some of the major stores remain open with access only from the outside. They are expected to close soon. All stores inside the mall are gone.

In the early 1990s, with a strong Canadian dollar in their wallets and purses, Ontario shoppers flocked to the Buffalo area to shop at places such as Walden Galleria, Eastern Hills Mall and the Factory Outlet Mall, but it was Boulevard Mall that became most familiar to border-crossers because of its versatile lineup of reasonably priced shops, food court and roadhouse-style restaurants.

During that time, shoppers from the GTA and across Ontario would regularly make the trek to shop for goods that were less expensive than in Canada and came at a cheaper tax rate. Canadians were also attracted by the variety of products, ones that they saw in U.S. television commercials but weren’t available in Canada.

“Boulevard Mall was always the first place we went to when we went shopping down to Buffalo,” said Min Clements of Mississauga. “We would take Friday off and head down for an extended weekend of shopping. It was great.”

The trip from the Toronto area to Boulevard Mall would only take about 90 minutes, which also made the trip doable in a day. But most shoppers would stay for the 48 hours, which allowed more goods to be brought back to Canada without paying duty fees.

Although there are no exact figures, it is estimated that tens of thousands of shoppers would cross the border each day at Niagara Falls or Fort Erie, with those numbers likely doubling on weekends.

And while the early 1990s were the prime years, shopping traffic was also high for the first ten years of the 2000s.

“Because it was so close, it was like taking a vacation…a mini one,” said Rick Costello of Toronto, who said he spent more money on clothes at Boulevard Mall in one weekend than he did in Toronto all year. “I mean, it was perfect. You would take three days off, catch a Buffalo Bills or a Sabres game when you were there, eat at places that had great (chicken) wings and cheap beer, and go buy the latest Air Jordans (running shoes) that just weren’t available here.”

Boulevard Mall now faces a future similar to that of many other shopping centres in North America that have outlived their glory years due to the changing purchasing habits of consumers. It is expected to be demolished by this spring to make way for a mixed-use complex consisting of housing units, some retail shops and a community centre.


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