Citi Plaza’s food court highlights
The downtown core has plenty of options for food and entertainment. Budweiser Gardens and the London Knights, Victoria Park and its various festivals, as well as various small businesses and pubs down the streets.
Then there is one of London’s older malls, Citi Plaza, which has some great options for those looking to grab a bite to eat.
The mall is located right in the core of the downtown area and has been seeing more traction as of late thanks to its reasonable parking costs, location, and influx of businesses that have begun filling up the mall.
Kenneth Rose, an employee at the Subway in the food court of Citi Plaza, explained how customer numbers have dipped since before the pandemic, but have been beginning to rise again.
“We’re still not back to pre-pandemic numbers, but traffic has certainly picked up with more of the offices coming back. We have Skip, Uber, and Doordash, so we do get business through them as well.”
“We’ve been here for about 10 years in this spot, but we’ve been in the actual mall as a whole for around 37. It’s the second or third Subway ever in London. We still have the original owner too.”
With more and more changes going on in downtown London, people and businesses are slowly beginning to feel comfortable returning. Events such as London Knights games have been a big help in boosting the life in Citi Plaza.
“We do get a lot of traffic from more stuff going on like Knights games and such because people use the mall to park and then they can walk over,” said Rose. “Some people will make it a whole evening where they’ll come here to get dinner and then go over to the game.”
The mall certainly gives customers a few options for their meals from sandwiches and salads at Subway to juices and smoothies at Booster Juice, all the way to a muffin or a warm cup of coffee at the Tuck Shop Cafe.
There’s also the family-owned and operated Golden Wok, serving up delicious Chinese food at a decent price.
But one of the better-known options is the movie theatre located in the mall, Imagine Cinemas, previously Rainbow Cinemas. The theatre has been located in Citi Plaza since the early 2000s and the mall itself was built in the 1980s. Even Citi Plaza’s Subway has a long history.
“We’ve been here for about 10 years in this spot, but we’ve been in the actual mall as a whole for around 37. It’s the second or third Subway ever in London. We still have the original owner too.”
Along with the increasing flow of foot traffic in the mall, more businesses and offices have begun to open up as well. This has brought more life and consistency to Citi Plaza, which Rose and other food court workers are certainly happy about.
“We have more constant regular traffic with all the offices as well as the gym, so we get a lot of people from those. The Health Unit moved in as well in 2020, which has drawn a lot of people in.”
Walking through the mall, one can still see many vacant stores and empty hallways, much of which can be attributed to the stigma lingering in the downtown core.
“Downtown has an atmosphere, you know? Some people are sometimes scared to come down. They’ve started hosting a lot more events though that draw people over.”
The City of London has been rapidly growing with a population of over 420,000 expected to grow to nearly 650,000 by 2051. Downtown London will be growing with it, which is good news for the city and great news for Citi Plaza.