To celebrate Canterbury Anniversary Day, Joseph Harper ranks every mall in the Garden City. 

This is the first in the Malls of New Zealand series, where we rank the malls in major centres. Next week: Auckland.

When I was growing up in pre-quake Ōtautahi, people used to say that the malls tore the heart out of the CBD. The throbbing superstructures, with their handbag retailers and food courts, left the masses of suburbanites few reasons to visit ‘town’ other than a cheap dish of anti-vax Hare Krishna cuisine or a honey chicken sandwich. 

A hairdresser once told my wife that people tend to stick to their suburb in Christchurch, and it’s true. My dad hasn’t even been to the Square since before the earthquakes. Where’s the allure in a munted cathedral when you’ve got a New World on your street and a mall down the road that has Japanese pies and a JB HiFi? If you’re from here, or have been here a while, it’s easy to see why Ōtautahi is a mall town. In 2024, asking Garden City flatlanders which mall they shop at is probably a more telling question than which high school they attended.

The hardest part of ranking the malls of the city is determining what is and isn’t a mall. For the purposes of this ranking I decided that “the malls” needed to have an indoor space shared by several shops, the kind of space where they might pop up a Christmas tree. It also needed multiple food options, toilets, and a carpark. If unsure, the question I asked myself was “Could Sylvia Park have given birth to this after an erotic tryst with the Meridian?”

There are some obvious ones, like the big four which provide a map to the city with their convenient compass-point names (Northlands, Eastgate, South City, Westfield Riccarton). There are the quaint suburban hitching posts which provide nearby residents with key-cutting and muffin-breaking services. Then there are post-quake developments that don’t really “feel” like malls but probably are. 

An issue with my criteria that is probably going to infuriate several r/chch users is that they mean I’m not including places that call themselves a “mall” but mean it in the old timey Chitty Chitty Bang Bang kind of way. Places like Bishopdale Mall which is obviously iconic but was also accurately described by a friend of mine as “GOATed in terms of decrepitude”. I visited while researching this and bought an egg sandwich from Ma Baker. The sandwich was good but, yeah, it was extremely bleak. New Brighton Mall is the same again but amplified to the power of 10. 

I didn’t want to include this type of “mall” because it would mean having to include places like Tower Junction or the infamous “Blenheim Square”. I also omitted the Art Centre. Technically it’s a gothic revival mall that specialises in tattoos and fudge, but neither you nor I care to accept that. 

I visited all of these malls over a period of three weeks. I tried to eat something in every mall and explore every dank corridor and unnecessary atrium within each. My ranking is based on several factors including retail selection, dining options, air quality, rare shops, family friendliness and raw mood. Here’s how they shook out.

14. The Hub (Hornby)

An absolute disaster. A visit to The Hub is such an unpleasant experience that it’s hard to know where to start. It’s stupidly difficult to get into because it’s a mall built at an extremely busy junction on State Highway One! The car park sucks and feels both dangerous and suffocating. From outside The Hub looks absolutely huge with its long, weird, metal cladding. When you get inside, you realise it’s actually quite small – a reverse Tardis! There is a suite of bank branches, several hair salons, and a PaknSave. There is a Japan Mart which is good and an amazing shop called “House of Felt”. I was also taken by a baffling shop called “Goodstüff lifestyle”. 

My favourite thing at this mall was riding the uncharacteristically serene escalator to the second storey car park exit. It felt very relaxing because of a big green advertisement plastered beside the handrail. As fun as that was, it’s a bad sign when your escalator is a highlight. The foodcourt features four(!) sushi places, a Tank Juice, and of course a Muffin Break. I opted for an indulgent slice from the Cheeky Scarecrow Cafe – great name! The toilets were clean and simple. 

The only kid-friendly aspect I found was a little coin-operated ride where you sit in a small aeroplane. It was directly outside a shoe shop that had a big sign reading “We all ♡ a SHOE BARGAINS” and something about this felt hostile. There was also a machine that squeezed fresh juice from oranges which I guess some kids would enjoy?

Historically, my only happy memory of visiting this mall was going to the charmingly named Movieland cinema. My mum took me to the Christchurch premiere of the Whale Rider there. They don’t show movies at The Hub any more. They just have a massive Farmers. 

13. Dress Smart (Hornby)

Being in this mall feels as though you are trapped in the hollowed out exoskeleton of a horseshoe crab. It is an unsettling and Kafkaesque experience and you can’t even get a haircut there! That’s if you can even get inside. The car park here is somehow worse than its sister-wife mall (The Hub) across the road. It’s all extremely tight and forces you to make impossibly sharp turns. 

Inside, that classic Dress Smart smell, a clean fabric emptiness, hangs heavy in the air. When I visited, there was a teenager standing at the main entrance with a guitar, playing ‘Creep’ by Radiohead. 

I will admit that the clothing options are plentiful – I saw a man leaving Kathmandu with seven pairs of trousers who looked pleased as punch. But also plentiful are the sad looking middle-aged men wearing backpacks and sitting on the little couch things in the corridors. For food, your only options are a dismal sandwich from Coffee Club or a New Zealand Naturals ice cream. It’s cool that there is a Keen shoes-with-holes-in-the-outside shop though, I guess.

I’m sorry Hornby but your malls are appalling. At least you’ll always have Boh Runga.

12. Bush Inn Centre (Upper Riccarton)

For a place with such an esoteric range of shops, it’s remarkable how unspeakably sad it feels to walk around the Bush Inn Centre. It reminds me of a Ken Loach movie, specifically the part they all have where the wheels have come off and the hard boot heel of capitalism is grinding all the optimism out of a character like foie gras from a goose. 

When I visited, I was greeted by sandwich boards promising an exotic range of crystals and hi-spec frisbees. Inside there were all kinds of interesting spaces. An e-bike shop inexplicably filled with pairs of discounted jeans! A fish shop called Salmon Heaven! Something called “The Provodore”! Unfortunately I also noticed an alarming number of empty shops, and even more that seemed to have recently closed down. A pet shop (shut down), a halal butcher (shut down), a bakery (shut down). 

Of the shops that remained defiantly open, I was charmed by the Afrosentail Beauty Store which sells wigs, braids and a fine selection of African clothing. I was frankly shocked that there is a shop dedicated to the competitive frisbee sport of disc golf which seemed to be thriving. Alas, a mall cannot live on Afrosentail beauty services and state of the art frisbees alone. The toilets are also ugly, hospice-like and hard to find.

In terms of dining options, the Bush Inn Centre might have the most exhaustive range in town. Inside there is KimChee Korean food, the very tidy Moko cafe, and a place called Dumpling Inn. On the outer facing fringe of the mall there are even more options – Carl’s Jr., Taco Bell, a Noodle Station. There’s something for every craving. It’s just too bad it seems like a challenging place to run a business, so much so that it makes visiting the mall a downbuzz experience.

Maybe they’ll turn it around. There’s an unbelievably large, bright pink parkour playground place opening soon called Ninja Valley. Maybe Ninja Valley can save Bush Inn. 

11. The Tannery (Woolston)

I think people are going to be annoyed that I am ranking this so low. Standing on the site of what I can only assume was some kind of tannery, this post-quake, stained glass, red brick retrofit has done all it can to overwhelm what was once Ōtautahi’s smelliest areas. It’s nice! Ultimately though, this just isn’t what I want in a mall. It’s too posh, too artisanal, too expensive. 

There are some highlights, of course. The Cassels brew pub is great and we all like looking at the weird triangular roof. A trip to Blue Smoke almost guarantees a rollickin’ evening of Adam Hattaway paying homage to some boomer rock deity. The cinema has fantastic carpet. I had three delicious pieces of sushi at Nori Table, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t intrigued by Mitchellie’s Cafe Rinato. The toilets have wooden seats and fancy, toggly buttons on top.

At the end of the day though, most of the shops here feel like a deluxe @cquisitions – good for boutique planters and handcrafted felt pot-stands etc but ultimately not that useful. The bit across the car park features even more of these along with some shops which look very nice but kind of seem AI generated – “Marmaduke Shoppe”, “Sadhanna Surfboards”, “Bombo” and more. 

The car park also does serious damage to the Tannery brand. It feels Piha Rescue-level dangerous. 

10. Avonhead Mall (Avonhead)

I cannot tell you how badly I wanted this to be the best mall in Christchurch. I drive past this mall frequently when I visit my mother and I adore the big primary coloured logo. I imagined that inside I would find a gorgeous, twee little set of shops catering to my every need. When I actually visited, I was deflated. While the car park is small, airy, and fresh, there’s just not much to it. 

A sign outside boasts of “18 specialty shops”, but inside I only counted 10 and I think I’m being generous. There’s a bustling bookshop, Piccadilly Books, a florist, a mortgage broker (lol), and two hair salons. One thing that surprised me when I visited all these malls is how many hairdressers there are in malls. There was also a specialty merino shop offering “outstanding discounts” and a Countdown. That’s pretty much it. 

For food, there was a small sushi stand, but the real gem is the Merrin Street Brewery Bar. When I visited, the staff were helping a man carry huge portions of a Sunday roast to his car in silver tinfoil trays. I thought to myself, what a lucky guy! I would have loved to sample a beer at that fantastic little mall bar, but it was 9.45am on a Sunday. 

As I left, they were playing Westlife on the mall speakers, and I noticed a well-stocked stand with bus timetables and other important pieces of bus information. I looked up at the simple stained-glass windows over the entrance, and noticed that when combined with the gaping door and pair of hanging lights, the mall looked like the face of some huge, happy golem.  

9. Merivale Mall (Merivale)

Ooh la la! Based on my visit to Merivale Mall, I get the impression this mall primarily exists to house clothing boutiques with preposterous names. When I was there, Blue Illusion, Storm, Flo and Frankie and Decjuba were all doing a tidy trade. I saw three women wearing berets and four men in fitted floral-print shirts. 

Inside, the food options are limited to a glitzy edition of Tank Juice or J’aime Les Macarons. On the outside edge of the mall there are a few more eateries. There’s a Cocoa Black cafe, a Little India, and an enigmatic spot called T.O.M. (Table Of Munchies) where they sell high-balls, bao buns, and curly fries with Japanese mayo. The Fresh Choice supermarket is also well-lit, clean, and boasts a massive range of craft beer and wine. No offence but it feels more like a New World than a Fresh Choice. 

One miraculous feature is that the Merivale Mister Minnit is an actual brick and mortar shop instead of the usual kiosk. How crazy is that? 

Hidden away upstairs there’s a Kip McGrath learning centre and a photo and video specialist shop. I imagined what it would be like to drop a kid off to practise their reading comprehension and multiplication strategies, then swan downstairs to grab a pistachio macaron and try on a floaty mumu. It’s certainly a life, but feels better suited to a pseudo-Melbourne outdoor laneway than a mall. Still, that Mister Minnit is pretty special.

8. South City (CBD)

South City, centre of downtown. What have the ravaging winds of time done to you, my girl. From the outside, South City with its squared off edges, and thick coating of woody vine, presents itself as a grand old Tudor dame. It looks to be the kind of place where Shakespeare himself might have performed for the humble and haughty lads and ladies of jolly old London town. If you never had to go inside, it might well top this list! 

The car park is second to none. I cannot count on all my fingers and toes the number of times I have parked there in order to immediately leave the premises and walk into the depths of Christchurch city. There are always tonnes of spaces and even a special wee section where you can park to nip into the Chemist Warehouse via a backdoor so you can pretend the rest of the mall doesn’t exist. Alas, it does exist. 

South City used to pop off. I bought my first CD single from the Sounds there (U2 – Beautiful Day)  and I have it on good authority that the McDonalds in the food court was one of the finest in town. Nowadays every shop feels like a knock-off and at least four of the spaces seem to cycle through tenants every three months. One of these has been converted to an exceptionally bleak “Kids Corner”, a grey hollow, empty but for a dolls house and one of them curvy wire games that GP waiting rooms have. One of my coworkers told me she often goes there for the Cotton On because it’s massive. True enough but, when I visited, there were buckets in the aisles because the roof was leaking. 

Athena Books is charming enough, but also has big “we have Scorpio Books at home” energy. In the last wee while South City has welcomed a Chemist Warehouse and a JB Hifi, big names which at least assure the mall can count on plenty of pilgrims seeking name brand pharmaceuticals and Apple accessories. A few months ago, they opened “Reduced to Clear” which had lines out the door for the first week. I think they sell soon-to-expire things from PaknSave? When I visited they had remarkable deals on fruit juice concentrate. 

Really though, South City has only one true and vital reason for being this high in my estimation. Japanz Bakery – the perfect and tiny dispensary of sweet and savoury offerings. Fluffy white sandwiches and pies blanketed in flakey, buttery pastry. I’ve never met anyone with a bad word to say about Japanz and as far as I’m concerned, they are basically taking the whole damn mall on their milk-bread shoulders and carrying them this far up the rankings. 

7. Church Corner Mall/West Plaza/Peerswick Mall (Church Corner)

A visit to this dense collection of mini-malls and shopping arcades is an extremely exhilarating experience. For the purpose of these rankings, I’m going to combine them because it feels like the right thing to do. The car park here is easily the worst car park of any mall on this list. It’s difficult to traverse, and there are potholes and random bumps everywhere. Trying to get in or out is a hazard matrix unto itself with blindspots and sight blocks up the wazoo. Plus it’s frequently swarming with people and cars angling to shark your spot if you hesitate for even a second. 

Inside the mall, you’ll exclusively find rare shops and all manner of specialty markets. Butchers, bakers, fishmongers, fresh fruits and vegetables are all plentiful. Unless you know exactly what you’re after and where you plan to get it, your head is liable to spin a bit, especially because it’s generally very busy. Food options are beyond plentiful. You could visit every weekend and try out a new eatery and probably see out a year without a repeat. 

Unfortunately if you’re not looking for food, it’s probably not the mall for you. There’s Game Corner, a marvellous card shop on the fringes of the mall, and Dragon PC which likely does something with computers. If you’re after a pair of jeans though, you’re shit outta luck. Still, it’s a genuinely vibrant place and a total one of a kind in the Garden City. Worth a visit if only to buy a carrot and a pandan donut. 

6. Eastgate (Linwood)

I don’t think anyone knows what to do about places like Eastgate. Occupying one corner of a busy intersection opposite an Animates, a Burger King and a VapeMerchant, Eastgate cuts a defiant figure. The car park is big and easy enough to navigate, but maybe that’s because there aren’t that many visitors most of the time. Off the car park there’s a Warehouse, a Warehouse Stationery, and a Countdown and the signs above the main entrance say “EASTGATE – Shop Easy”. 

Inside, the mall feels like a level on the Last of Us. There are a few shops, but not that many. There’s a Postie Plus, a $2 shop, something called Bob Style. Next to the Mister Minnit, a shiny, coin-operated carousel was pushed under a stairwell. The whole place was a bit lost. 

The foodcourt offers plenty in the way of elegant panini options. There’s a Hillyers of Lincoln kiosk which is good for a pie. I mistakenly thought that the stuffed potato place, One Potato Two, had moved on and my heart broke. Its magnificent signage was still visible – a pair of gleeful potatoes wearing tā moko – proudly boasting “the best spud in Te Wai Pounamu”, but it looked closed. But this must have been temporary, because The Spinoff has been informed that One Potato Two is very much still in business. I will be making a return visit soon to try a spud.* 

Upstairs there is a whole bunch of stuff you don’t usually find in a mall. The Linwood library, for one. There’s also a Citizen’s Advice Bureau and a suite of other useful community services and organisations. MP Poto Williams used to have her office in the mall! 

There’s also an exceedingly spare children’s play area. When I took a photo of a funny line-up of kids ride-on machines, a woman came and asked me what I was taking photos of. I showed her the photo and told her it was for an article. I really liked how that lady did that, showing a modicum of care for her fellow mall denizens and looking out for creeps. Taking photos of random things in a mall is pretty weird, but she was the only person who even seemed to notice. It made me want to love Eastgate. It made me yearn for better days for the place.

5. Barrington Mall (Spreydon)

An ancient and noble beast! A mall so iconic that it has convinced some people that “Barrington” is a suburb. It’s also a bizarre and basically useless place – a perfect archetypical mall in that regard. 

Wandering around inside gives an uncanny valley effect. It has everything a mall should have. A Caroline Eve and a Postie Plus and a racy wee number called Lingerie on Barrington where the mannequins have nipples visible from space. There’s a $2 shop and a Bitcoin ATM. The main entrance looks like a spaceship and gazes down on the shoppers like a mighty panopticon. But everything in there feels fake, like the shops are sets from a movie that’s been in production hell for too long. The Warehouse is a perfect example. It’s got a nice clean sign outside, but inside it’s contemptuous and they never have the right size plastic storage containers. It’s one of the worst Warehouses I’ve experienced on God’s green earth.

The car park is a game of two halves. The Fresh Choice end is spacious and welcoming. The bit by the Warehouse on the other hand is a hellish game devised by an eldritch demon town planner who gets off on cars gently knocking into each other. 

All that to say I visit around once a fortnight. I shop at the Fresh Choice and post my mail at the Paper Plus. I’ve bought beer from the Super Liquor and six-inch sandwiches from the Subway. The Anderson and Hill sports store is owned by Nathan Astle, who sometimes makes a special window dressing with bits of his old kit. The Paper Plus has one of those little community exchange libraries tacked outside and my friend’s tweenage daughter tells me the Muffin Break is the best Muffin Break in Christchurch. 

When I visited for research, I stood looking at the weird empty space beside the Couplands bakery. It filled me with a sense of hope and sadness. Hope because it gave me the impression of an airy Roman piazza. Sad because just next door, a cop was dusting the pharmacy for fingerprints. 

4. Northlands (Northcote)

One of the big boys. Northlands stretches out long and languid on Main North Road outta town. Someone told me that there’s an old person walking group that does laps of Northlands to get their steps in and keep in high health. In a way, it’s spacious to a fault. 

This is a mall’s mall – loaded with all the big names in mall brands: Jacqui E, New Zealand Natural, the Body Shop, iRazor, Strandbags, and one of those garish shops that sells karaoke microphones. It has a Hoyts cinema and a little astroturf playground with a little spherical helicopter for kids to slink around in. Northlands even has a few one-of-a-kind shops. There’s a Build a Bear Workshop which I thought was something only Americans had. The Frontrunner has a great reputation as the go-to place in the city for football boots. 

Yes, the car park is terrible and scary (noticing a recurring theme?), but the toilets are an absolute sanctuary of serenity – clean and tucked away without feeling hidden or hard to find. 

Food is bountiful too. Globalist monsters like McDonalds and Muffin Break sit side by side with humble indie offerings from Royal Roast and Becky Boo Gelato. There’s even a special little nook down one end where Lonestar, Sals Pizza, and Nando’s roll their pointer fingers with a sexy come hither. 

Sounds great, right? So why isn’t it the best? There’s no joie de vivre. When you pull into the Main North Road entrance, you have to drive past the gorgeous, sloping tomb that was once a dine-in Pizza Hut. You remember the ice cream and jelly and bowls of chopped nuts. You remember the fake Godfather speakeasy lighting. You think about how stupid and fun and kitschy that was. Then you walk into Northlands and look down at the little gold speckles in the tiles and the shops that are the same as everywhere else and you feel empty and angry about how dull and clean and modern everything is. That’s my response anyway.

3. The Colombo (Sydenham)

It’s telling that when I was visiting all the malls for this list, I totally forgot about The Colombo, despite the fact that it’s one of the closest malls to my house. Nestled in humble and hard-working Sydenham, it’s a curious place. On my visit, The Colombo felt like a utopian space, a vision of what malls could be. It’s a heady mix of independent retailers, varied and quality culinary offerings and your go-to place to buy a fridge on finance.

The car park seems intimidating at first but is actually pretty chill with easy access from Colombo and Durham streets. The location is bizarre though and speaks mainly to people who are just driving past and think, “Oh yeah”. There’s a cinema there, run by the people who used to run the legendary Cloisters before the quakes, which is impressive. I’ve never been to Academy Gold but I’m sure it’s alright. Inside you’re bound to be taken in by the sheer number of quirky mid-century tables that are dotted about the shared area. The plants inside are real plants which is a class touch, and when I visited, the mall was in the grips of an “art takeover”. Who can begrudge an “art takeover”?

I started by counting the eateries. An OUTSTANDING selection. Potsticker Dumplings! Little Vietnam! The Amigo Cafe! An array of the highest order! The Serious Sandwich Company surely give them lot from Hokitika a run for their money and there’s a florist that promises “hot soup/ fresh salads/ glazed ham”. What more could you need?

Retailer-wise, it’s rare shops all the way down. Nordic Chill somehow sells (maybe) real Ikea stuff along with Moomin trolls and aspirational slippers. Industria has those candles with a bit of wood instead of a wick. Stencil has sneakers wrapped in gladwrap and bags for outlaws and stylish people to put their drugs in. The Frontrunner stocks every model of carbon-plated running shoe known to man. For some reason there were a bunch of kitchen sinks in the entryway that seemed like an absolute steal if the whiteware sages of Smiths City are to be believed. The more I explored The Colombo, the more I fell in love. 

The Colombo strikes an extremely difficult balance. It’s an “I’m not like other malls” mall that actually rocks. I’m a fan.

2. Westfield Riccarton (Riccarton)

David Correos came to do a work-in-progress show in Ōtautahi earlier this year and started by riffing for 15 minutes on Riccarton mall that fully killed. The audience roared with recognition at every punchline, which makes sense. Westfield Riccarton is an experience we all share, and an experience we all kind of hate – it’s unpleasant but important. 

There’s something of a “Prince that was Promised” energy to the place. Before it was Westfield Riccarton, it was just Riccarton Mall. The fact that that specific Trans-Tasman mega-corp bought the mall was a little miracle. The west was finally won and the famed Canterbury Mall Compass was complete. Then it started to expand. It grew and grew until it took the shape of the ungodly behemoth we know today. It’s bloody big. 

The size is the obvious advantage Westfield Riccarton holds over its challengers. Yes it has all the regular mall shops, but it also has the space and largesse to bring in some prestige brands the likes of which you’d usually find down the corridors of Times Square or Oxford Street. A Lego shop to the left of you, a Gorman to the right. There’s a Footlocker and a Golden Homes showroom. There aren’t many malls out there where you can end up leaving with a mango smoothie and a kitset house. Yeah, it’s big, but when it comes to malls, the idea that “big is good” is a Mitre10 fallacy. 

Food is a problem. While just outside the mall the kindly pancake merchants at Drexels await, the internal foodcourt is totally uninspired. It’s the standard mall favourites: Tank, KFC, Sushi Express, Kebab Land, two Shamiana’s for some reason. A bigger issue is that the foodcourt is right in the middle of the mall and causes a nasty wee blockage to the mall’s pedestrian flow. The McDonalds is always astonishingly busy, drawing a heaving mass, and woe befall anyone who accidentally tries to walk that route of the Muffin Break roundabout. There is a PaknSave and if you really want to eat inside Riccarton, you might be better off just buying a banana.

The cinema is another snag for me. A movie theatre is definitely a plus, but Hoyts Riccarton is easily the worst cinema in the city. The foyer is insipid, the ticket system is halting, and once a juvenile delinquent girl stepped out my wife while they waited in line for the toilet. 

When it’s busy, it’s a salmon run. If you don’t plan and move decisively, you’re liable to be swept from one end to the other and entirely miss your chance to pop into Ugg Express for a cheeky slipper. Christmas shopping there is enough to turn you into a Jehovah’s Witness. Teenagers also seem to beat people up there at least once a year, which is not ideal.

I’m not going to say much about the car park other than to say the experience of finding a space is akin to living inside of a Safdie brothers movie. It’s a cursed and terrible place, yet we all endure Westfield Riccarton every now and then because sometimes you simply need to go there. There’s a magnetism to the place that’s undeniable. It’s a mall that looks down at you with a sneer, that you visit with gritted teeth and whine about on Reddit but it’s also the mall you probably think of first in this flat little part of the world.

1. The Palms (Shirley)

All up I’ve lived in Christchurch for over two decades but I’ve spent bugger-all time at The Palms. My main Palms-related memory is that a friend interviewed National Front founder Kyle Chapman there for a high school media studies project. It’s not my local and honestly it always felt like a young pretender, desperate to play with the big boys – those of the compass  but held back by its effete name. “The Palms”?! This is Christchurch, not Venice Beach, California. Yet when I started talking to people about this article, I was shocked by how fondly people spoke about The Palms. Then I went there and it all made sense. 

You stand outside in the ring of perfectly bland mall bars and restaurants and you look up at the googie-futurist frontispiece and you have to say to yourself, “Wow! This really is a mall”. Then you look around and maybe even see a real honest to goodness palm tree – not the titular Palms which were chopped down (I think?) but there are still palm trees in the vicinity. It’s a sanguine and buoyant space, in the maudlin state of Shirley. It makes you think to yourself, “By god they actually did it!” 

I know we all carry different yardsticks for shopping malls. Some people reckon the best mall is just the mall with the most stuff. Others highly rate boutique experiences like coin-operated karaoke booths. Still others seem to want a mall to basically be an architectural wonder, an art gallery with a shop or two. Here’s what I want: I want it to have a car park that doesn’t make me pray for Jesus to take the wheel. I want to share a meal with a sea of strangers all sitting at clean little tables. I want to be able to buy a pair of decent undies. I found what I want at The Palms. 

There are around a dozen hair and beauty salons at The Palms. There are several banks and multiple jewellers. There’s a Chemist Warehouse for your protein powder and a City Fitness for your marginal gains. There’s a mobility scooter charging station and “The Palms Piano Project” where literally anyone can play a piano. The Readings cinema at The Palms is a haven for budget-conscious lovers of big-budget blockbusters. Until a few weeks ago there was a “first of its kind” virtual reality arcade. The Palms has it all. Gym-goers, shopaholics and thrill-seekers walk these corridors side by side. 

Is the covered part of the car park kind of freaky? Yes! But if you cross it will you find yourself at the Shirley library? Yes again! Foodwise, The Palms offers a succulent mix of big names and mom-and-pop cuisine. McDonalds and Pita Pit and Mi Amore Mexican Cantina and Donut King share equal footing at The Palms. 

The Palms is just big enough to feel like a monster, but just intimate enough to feel like home. The decor reflects this with its simple white tiles with pounamu-green feature rectangles. It’s modest but also overdone, confident but not up itself. It’s everything a little mall dreams of being when it grows up. 

I think The Palms is the best we have. It represents the perfect level of boring functionality that malls are there for. I’ve written all these words, but the top ranked Google review says is all:

“Palms is clean and friendly”. It certainly is.

God bless the suburb of Shirley and god bless The Palms.

*This post has been updated from an earlier version that said One Potato Two at Eastgate had moved on. We got it wrong: One Potato Two is still there and still very much in the business of serving up the best spuds in Te Wai Pounamu.

This is the first in the Malls of New Zealand series, where we rank the malls in major centres. Next week: Auckland.