Prairie Mall. Photo: Shane Clausing

By Shane Clausing

Local Business

Prairie Mall to remain operating as normal despite new COVID-19 restrictions

Dec 13, 2020 | 5:00 AM

As new COVID-19 restrictions come into place across Alberta, the Prairie Mall in Grande Prairie says it won’t be impacted too much.

The new restrictions issued by the Government of Alberta will make it so that the mall and its retailers will only be allowed to operate at 15 per cent capacity.

General Manager Lionel Frey says that the mall has already been prepared for tighter restrictions.

“Our capacity is robust enough that I don’t think it’ll be anything out of the ordinary. From our standpoint, we are looking at normal operations. We will have security monitoring the traffic, but I’m really not concerned about that.”

Frey tells EverythingGP that with the mall moving down to 15 per cent capacity, they will be allowed to have a maximum of 1,000 people inside at once.

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The Christmas season is normally the busiest time of the year for the mall. However, Frey says that potentially having 1,000 people inside isn’t of a concern, even during the busy season.

“We have door counters on all of our door entrances, and we have the ability online to check them on a moment-by-moment basis. We’re going to be monitoring the door counters. Certainly, if we reach close to capacity, we will notify security and make provisions.”

“Looking at historical counts from our traffic counters, at any one time in the centre, we’re probably looking at 700-800 people. And that’s really at peak times on peak days.”

Frey says that retailers are also ready for the change, as they already had to operate at 25 per cent capacity before the new restrictions were implemented.

As for if there will be a Christmas rush this year, Frey said that this year has been quieter than year’s past.

“What we’ve noticed this year is that the shopping patterns have differed from previous years. We’ve noticed a lot of people do their Christmas shopping in October and November to simply avoid the rush in December. I think it’s been more evenly distributed throughout the last three months.”

The mall’s hours will remain the same as they were before the restrictions.

It is open from 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. from Monday to Thursday, 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, and 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Sunday.