The shopping centre contains 120 stores and services on a single enclosed level. The interior hallways are laid out in a rectangle, with secondary branching halls from the six entrances. Offices and services including the management office are located on a small second level in the northwest corner of the building. There are also two small underground sections for some discount stores and the Carlingwood YWCA/YMCA. The stores are a mix of chain stores, small independents, fast food outlets and a restaurant. The largest store is the Loblawsgrocery store with an area of at the east end of the mall. At the west end of the mall was a long-time Sears Canada location that is now vacant. The mall is situated at the corner of Carling and Woodroffe avenues, about 1 kilometre north of the Highway 417. A 1996 survey found that 21% of shoppers used mass transit to get to the mall, and that Carlingwood was an exception in being accepted as primarily an automobile destination. The weekly traffic averages about 155 000 visitors per week.
History
Simpsons-Sears department store opened in 1955. It was then a two-floor department store with of retail space. The mall was constructed over the next two years. Carlingwood opened in 1956 and offered 40 stores and was at the time the largest shopping centre in Ottawa. Third storey was added on to Sears in the late 1970s. One of the selling points of the mall was its extensive of free parking. Besides Sears, one of the early stores to move into the mall was the established shoe store Armstrong & Richardson. Armstrong & Richardson ceased operations in 2018. In 1957, the Carlingwood Branch of the Ottawa Public Library opened in the mall, the first mall library in Canada. The branch later moved to a nearby custom-built facility in 1966. In 2002, the management of the mall was criticised by CUPE, a labour union, for locking out cleaning staff who were part of the union in favour of non-union staff who received minimum wage and no benefits. The CUPE boycott of the mall ended with a victory for the union. Bill Murnighan, a writer for Our Times, used the dispute as an example of the "crossroads" that union organising faced in Canada at the beginning of the millennium. Although the strike was directed at the shopping centre in the interest of gaining more publicity and having more impact, the cleaning staff were actually not employees of the shopping centre. The cleaning of the shopping centre is contracted out, and the cleaning staff were actually striking against the shopping centre to put pressure on their employer, Allans Maintenance. Until July 2005, the Alex Dayton Seniors Activity Centre, co-founded by Ottawa MayorBob Chiarelli, was located near entrance three in the east side of the mall. For the 2007 Ontario election, the space was used as the office for provincial politician Jim Watson's re-election campaign. The mall was renovated in the mid 2000s to add seating and other "comfort" improvements. In an interview with Ottawa Business Journal, former General Manager Denis Pelletier named the renovation as one of the reasons for the mall's successful 2005 Christmas shopping season, along with the mall's new bargain store, the Sears anchor, and easy customer access. This renovation has resulted in a very customer-friendly centre. In the four main passages, there are upholstered benches, capable of seating over 180 people. In addition, there are over 150 tables, in the three refreshment areas, each with two or more seats. Both sitting and refreshment areas are decorated with planters containing trees or shrubs. The mall was formerly the home of one of the oldest and smallest Zellers stores in Ottawa until the store closed in 1999 and was replaced with a drug store. Also, Dollarama is downstairs. It also formerly contained a Marks & Spencer. On January 8, 2018, Sears closed due to bankruptcy. Demolition of the former Sears store began in March 2019 and ended in June of that year, and will be replaced with a new structure for a Canadian Tire store around 2021.
