It is located at the southeast corner of Victoria Park Avenue and Ellesmere Road in the Maryvale neighbourhood in the Scarborough district.

Parkway Mall is more geared toward providing essential community and neighbourhood-level retail stores and services, rather than being a large-scale regional shopping destination, such as the nearby Fairview or Scarborough Town Centre.

Stores that used to face the outside world were reoriented to have their windows and entrances inside the mall, a move that left the complex with a forbidding facade of service doors and blank concrete walls.

"What set the Parkway apart was the design of its anchor unit, leased to Grand Union supermarkets, that was essentially a gigantic parabolic arched roof with glass walls at either end.

Supported by curved wooden beams, the structure was among largest of its kind built in Canada in 1958.