Empress Walk, Residential and retail complex in North York, Canada.
Empress Walk is a condominium and retail complex at Yonge Street and Empress Avenue in North York Centre, Toronto. Its three-storey podium mall covers 240,000 square feet and is topped by a 95-foot dome over an unsupported escalator to the cinema. Above the mall stand the 34-storey Pinnacle and Royal Pinnacle towers, with 745 units between them.
Empress Walk was proposed by Menkes Developments in the mid-1990s as part of Mel Lastman's plan to give North York a downtown of its own. Phase 1 opened in 1997 and Phase 2 in 2000, the year RioCan REIT acquired the property. The mall was renamed RioCan Empress after an exterior renovation in 2022.
The cinema has 3,035 seats and an IMAX screen. It opened as Famous Players SilverCity, passed to Empire Theatres, and returned to Cineplex in 2013 when Empire left Ontario; Cineplex renovated it then. The mall's jester logo, dropped in the 2022 renaming to RioCan Empress, referred to the name Empress.
The lowest level of the mall has an underground passage to North York Centre subway station, and a concourse-level walkway links to the 5075 Yonge Street tower. A TTC tunnel also connects across the street to Mel Lastman Square, the North York Civic Centre and the North York Central Library. Some retailers and clinics on the Yonge and Empress frontages have exterior-only entrances.
The mall's 95-foot dome tops a three-storey podium and frames the long unsupported escalator linking the ground floor to the Cineplex multiplex. The cinema has 3,035 seats and an IMAX screen. The escalator is easy to miss when entering from the subway level.
The community of curious travelers
AroundUs brings together thousands of curated places, local tips, and hidden gems, enriched daily by 92,632 contributors worldwide.