Ryerson University's Centre for the Study of Commercial Activity produces three retail locations-related geocoded databases that are available in ENVISION.
The Greater Toronto Area Stores (GTAS) database offers location data for 60,000 stores. Data are collected through an annual field survey of shopping centres, retail strips and power centres, and then subdivided by location type with geocoded locations of each store.
The National Shopping Centres (NSC) database contains more than 4,700 shopping centres categorized by standard shopping classifications. The shopping centre types include: convenience, neighbourhood, community, regional, super-regional and power centre, factory outlet, lifestyle centre, hybrid and mixed-use.
The Major Retail Chains (MRC) database is national and features more than 43,000 store locations from 680 retail chains. Each record includes fields with the name of the retail chain, the conglomerate that owns it, the store address including postal code, its retail sector (NAICS code), province, CMA and CSD identifiers, and estimated leasable area.