Big sliding doors

Of course, Spokane Valley is a traditional suburban mall, while International Village is very urban and very nontraditional. The International Village Mall was built as part of a large master-planned urban development (called International Village) that also included several residential towers (including the one that I stayed in on both of my Vancouver trips) by a company called Henderson Development, which doesn't appear to have had any prior experience with mall development -- in fact, it doesn't appear that they've done all that much other than International Village, at least if their (extremely outdated) website is to be believed. They did build one other nontraditional mall in the Vancouver area, and that one will definitely be on the blog some day. International Village was developed from the mid 90s through the early 00s, and the mall was built in 1999, following what I'm sure seemed like an ultramodern design at the time!