Galleria London, is located in the heart of downtown London, Ontario at 355 Wellington Street. In its prime, it used to be a bustling shopping mall, anchored by The Hudson's Bay Company and Eaton's department stores along with such flagship tenants as Eddie Bauer, Harry Rosen, Roots, HMV, Club Monaco, and a plethora of other clothing and shopping stores. Following the failure of Eaton's, Galleria started to see the disappearance of a numerious of stores, including The Bay.

Galleria is now taking an active roll in shifting its objectives as a shopping mall, into a community centre, in hopes to breathe more life into its failing occupancy.

Construction is now underway for a beautiful new Central Library, scheduled to open in March 2002 in the former Bay Department store. With a cost of over 16.5 million dollars, the three-storey facility will include a 380-seat performance hall and Garden Reading Room.

Galleria is also home to The GoodLife Fitness Club, Teletech calling centre, a variety of restaurants and eateries.

Galleria London's new focous is as a mixed use urban centre. Brain child of general manager, David Hall, believes the structure can rely heavily on the motto "commerce, culture and community”.

The University of Western Ontario Centre for Continuing Studies will be making Galleria its new home, brining more than 6,000 continuing studies students downtown each year. The Centre currently offers close to 300 professional development and lifelong-learning courses in areas such as business and management, computer education, mediation/alternative dispute resolution, art, music, drama, languages, health and well-being. It also has a staff of 12, of which 11 will work from the Galleria offices.

With the new major tenants, hopefully Galleria London will be able to revive its once buzzing image, and continue to support Downtown London.

Galleria is also an excellent place for urban exploration (also known as infiltration). The mall boasts a labyrinth of inter-connected tunnels, garages, loading docks, and secret rooms underneath it. If that wasn't enough, the easily accessible rooftop offers marvelous views of the downtown london skyline.

The basement is accessible through multiple doors found in the underground parking garage complex, as well as several underground loading docks which are left open throughout the day.

The roof is a little more difficult to get to. You have to go through a door labelled authorized personnel located in the southwest corner of the mall on the upper level, located between two shops. From this small service corridor, you can reach one of the sets of fire stairs which go all the way to the roof.

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