The cultural evolution of Cedar Park Place

The kaleidoscope of colourful awnings trimming aging retail storefronts along Cedar Park Place demand your attention.

Located along the south side of South Fraser Way Abbotsford, Cedar Park includes a long row of ethnically diverse businesses that is unlike any other strip mall in the Fraser Valley. Walking along the storefronts, you’re inundated with signs in different languages of various colours and sizes advertising sales, store hours, and when the latest Punjabi concert is coming to town.

The pungent smell of fabric dye signals you’re nearing a clothing store while a wide range of rich spices dominated by the fragrance of coriander and cumin reveal the location of Indian food. All of this surrounds a busy parking lot at the centre of the plaza.

Over the years, the shopping centre has evolved into the cultural hub it is known as today. But before it transformed to include businesses of diverse backgrounds, shop owners there were primarily from Mennonite families.

Lorne Welwood’s history with Cedar Park Place begins in 1984 when he first moved to Abbotsford.

“[Cedar Park] had quite a different character than it does now, in many ways,” he said.

Lorne and a few other independent lawyers had rented office space on the second floor of what is now a medical clinic at the entrance to the plaza. At the time, the ground floor was a branch of the Toronto Dominion Bank.

“There was no elevator,” Lorne said. “There were stairs up from the sidewalk on South Fraser Way.”

As Lorne describes it, the South Fraser Way strip was the original auto mall of Abbotsford. The road through the city’s centre was lined with car dealerships, most of which have since closed-up shop or moved. Clearbrook Town Square, meanwhile, was “a bunch of fir trees—undeveloped.” Further east on South Fraser Way was the newly-minted Sevenoaks Shopping Centre, which opened in 1975.

Cedar Park, like today, was bustling. Many of the buildings had first popped up in the 1960s. Directly across from Welwood’s office, exiting the plaza on South Fraser Way, was a Muffin Break franchise, where a Vietnamese restaurant sits today. The complex also contained Ronald Allan Clothiers, Clearbrook Realty, Olfert’s Printing, and Home Hardware.

Welwood remembers most business owners in the plaza at the time being primarily of Mennonite heritage.

He doesn’t recall much of a cultural shift during his time working from the plaza. But that transition did begin around the time he left his office space in 1990.

In a soon-to-be-released video documenting the history of Cedar Park, museum curators for The Reach say business ownership in the plaza began to reflect Abbotsford's growing South Asian population starting in the 1990s to the early 2000s. Among those business owners were Tarsem and Suchet Banwait.

According to the reach, Banwait Fashions was the first Punjabi-owned clothing store outside of Vancouver to serve the local South Asian community.

Before moving their clothing business to Cedar Park in 2001, the couple opened a shop on nearby Clearbrook Road in 1982.

Speaking to The Current in Punjabi, Suchet said that about 20 Punjabi-speaking households from Abbotsford and Mission would frequent their shop when it first opened.

Nearly 20 years later, the couple purchased their current commercial space in Cedar Park. Before them, the unit was briefly a furniture business, but Suchet primarily remembers it as Clearbrook Sports. The only predominant Punjabi business in the plaza when the Banwaits arrived was Lucky’s Video. It was the place to find Punjabi and Hindi movie rentals and the latest cassettes and eventually CDs.

“It was really different back then,” she said.

Punjabi groceries or restaurants weren’t yet established in Cedar Park at the time. Suchet said they were hard to come by in Abbotsford at all. Like many other immigrants, she would travel to the few shops selling specialty grocery in Vancouver.

Suchet estimates it was the mid-2000s when Dasmesh Foods opened in Cedar Park, followed by Patna Sweets, a Punjabi sweet shop, a few years later.

“There wasn’t anything available back then. Now we have everything readily available. It feels wonderful now,” she said.

“We see people that look like us.”

At 71, Suchet says she’s prepared to retire when her husband is ready. But she laughed at the thought, saying he prefers to keep busy with the store.

Last year, the couple celebrated 40 years in business.

A unique set up

Cedar Park may look and operate like a commercial mall but the land is actually owned by individual tenants.

Located near the corner of Clearbrook Road and South Fraser Way, Cedar Park Place is a municipal roadway that is a one-way traffic loop with a shared parking lot at its centre.

The origins of Cedar Park begin around 1966 with the development of three subdivisions. 

The Banwaits purchased their Cedar Park building when they relocated to the complex. Over the years they converted their original street-level unit to accommodate two shops, which they now lease; they relocated their clothing store to the basement.

Over the years, the city has issued 69 business licenses for the 42 properties that currently comprise Cedar Park.

The latest changes have come not so much in the makeup of the businesses, but in the underlying property values.

Like all other commercial properties, the value of Cedar Park's buildings has skyrocketed. In many parts of the valley, that has led to redevelopment and the exit of longtime businesses. That fate has not yet befallen a still thriving Cedar Park.