Popular roller skating pop-up forced out of Ontario mall ahead of redevelopment
A popular roller-skating pop-up operating out of a vacant store in an Ontario mall has received a termination notice to make way for a future redevelopment of the space.
SUSO Skate Co., which first opened up at the Oshawa Centre back in August 2024, has been the company's longest-running pop-up site and even received a one-year extension offer in April. Its arrival brought life back to the mall's 160,000-square-foot space, which formerly served as a Sears store and sat vacant since the company's liquidation in 2018.
The roller skating pop-up is known to turn empty spaces into roller rinks around southern Ontario and the GTA, with past locations at Don Mills, Promenade Shopping Centre, Bramalea City Centre, The Bentway, and Cambridge Centre.
Despite this, the pop-up informed its customers that it had received a notice from the Oshawa Centre to vacate the space on Sunday, Jan. 25.
"The former Sears has always been up for redevelopment and unfortunately, the time has come sooner than we expected," the announcement reads.
This news, as staff pointed out, wasn't entirely unexpected, as the store's future has been up in the air since January 2025, when Toronto-based Primaris Real Estate Investment Trust purchased the Oshawa Centre (along with a 50 per cent stake in Edmonton's Southgate Centre) for $585 million.
The mall itself has also undergone significant changes in recent years, including a $230 million expansion in 2016 that added 375,000 square feet of retail space and an upgraded food court.
The news of the pop-up's departure also comes as the City of Oshawa moves to encourage more higher-density, mixed-use projects in the area. This past summer, Oshawa City Council approved zoning changes around the mall that permit building heights of up to 22 storeys.
For now, SUSO Skate Co. is set to operate for seven more weeks before closing its doors at the end of January, and says it is already searching for its next location.
