Mike Burton thought he’d finally hit the parking jackpot: A free spot in a packed Yorkdale lot, right in the middle of the prime pre-Christmas shopping season.

That was until he noticed the woman striding quickly towards his Jeep, huffing and puffing.

“Get the f— out of my spot. ... I’ve been waiting longer than you. What’s wrong with you?” the woman shouted, as Burton frantically tried to roll up his window. She put one hand on top of the window to stop Burton from rolling it up, and suddenly, with her other hand, reached in and slapped him across the face.

After Burton threatened to call the police, the woman retreated, swearing, but not without a few swift kicks at Burton’s vehicle for good measure. That was in 2015. Burton hasn’t been back to the mall since.

“I’m not going to put myself in that situation. Shopping last-minute is brutal,” said Burton.

With parking spots increasingly at a premium — the population of the Greater Toronto Area has shot up from roughly 2.5 million when Yorkdale opened in 1964 to 6.4 million today — tales like Burton’s are hardly unique. It’s a problem the malls are painfully aware could cost them customers if it’s not solved. And they’re turning to a mix of new technology, old-fashioned valet service and more staff to help deal with it.

In 2010, Yorkdale Shopping Centre began using electronic signs at the entry to each of its parking lots to indicate how many spots were left in each section. Electronic sensors at the entrance and exit of each allow the signs to be updated in realtime. More recently, Yorkdale added that information to its website, along with a live chat. There are also “parking concierges” in the mall’s garages, directing would-be shoppers to free spots. The goal of it all? Making it easier to get people in and out of the mall.

“We asked ourselves ‘how can we reduce our customers’ pain points,’ ” said Yorkdale vice-president Claire Santamaria, who estimated roughly 80 per cent of the northwest Toronto mall’s customers drive there. While most customers park their own cars in one of the mall’s 8,000 spots, an increasing number are opting to pay a valet to go park their car, then bring it back when they’re done shopping, Santamaria said.

Reducing those pain points is especially crucial in an era when consumers have the option of doing their holiday shopping right from their desk or phone, said retail analyst Lisa Hutcheson.

“If the parking is causing a customer frustration, they might not even get to the door,” said Hutcheson, managing partner at retail consultancy J.C. Williams. “People can ask themselves ‘why do I need this? I’ll just order online.’”

Where once malls might have pondered whether or not to spend the extra money on valets, high-tech sensors and building new parking garages, now they have no choice, according to Michael Leblanc, senior retail advisor at the Retail Council of Canada.

“It’s gone from a nice to do, to a need to do,” said Leblanc. While an RCC survey suggested 72 per cent of holiday spending in Canada this year will be done in bricks and mortar stores rather than online, Leblanc said retailers need to make sure they’re making things as easy as possible. It’s not just parking, but things like big crowds or long lineups at the checkout that can cause customers to turn off the in-person shopping experience, Leblanc acknowledged.

“There’s really low friction when you shop online,” said Leblanc.

At Etobicoke’s Sherway Gardens, which sits right by Highway 427 and the junction of the Gardiner Expressway and Queen Elizabeth Way, drivers are an even higher proportion of the customer mix than at Yorkdale, said general manager Andy Traynor.

“There’s TTC access, but it’s just not as convenient as the subway. So the vast majority of our customers drive in,” said Traynor. During a two-stage facelift of the mall in 2017, Sherway added more indoor parking spots, which included red and green lights above each stall which could be seen from a distance.

“You can see from the end of the row where the free spots are,” said Traynor.

While it wasn’t cheap to add the new spots, or the lights, it was well worth it, Traynor added.

“We sat down and said we’re spending $550 million on renovations and adding 50 more stores. We should probably add more parking,” said Traynor.

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Last year, Sherway began offering shoppers the option of reserving their parking spot during the holiday season, for $8, which is two dollars cheaper than the mall’s valet parking.

“You can go online and reserve a premium spot at your favourite entrance, so you know in advance exactly where you’ll be parking. We got a really good response, so we kept it,” said Traynor.

Still, even during the busiest shopping time of the year, mall parking lots are less full than you might think. It just takes a bit of extra patience, said Yorkdale’s Santamaria.

“People come off the road and see the lot on the west side and think we’re packed,” said Santamaria. “Come through on the south road, drive to what looks like the back, and there’s always going to be more room. It’s actually very rare that the lots are full.”