Filling the void

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This article was published 01/02/2016 (3573 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ABIG chunk of dead retail space has come back to life with last week’s opening of a new Walmart Supercentre in the former Target space in Winnipeg’s Southdale Shopping Centre.

The Southdale Target was one of the first in the city to go dark last year after the U.S. department store giant announced last January its brief foray into the Canadian market had been a financial disaster, it was seeking protection from its creditors, and it would be closing all 133 of its Canadian big-box outlets and laying off more than 17,000 workers.

Within a matter of months, all five Target stores in Manitoba — four in Winnipeg and one in Brandon — had sold much of their inventory and closed their doors. With the closures, close to half a million square feet of retail space came flooding onto the market, raising concerns about how long it would take for landlords to backfill that much space. Especially with the retail expansion boom in Canada losing steam.

Two of the five Manitoba landlords got lucky. Canadian Tire announced in May it had acquired the leases for 12 former Target locations, including the one in the Grant Park Shopping Centre, and Walmart Canada announced it had purchased the leases for 13 others, including the Southdale store on Fermor Avenue.

The other three landlords weren’t as fortunate. A little more than a year after Target dropped its bombshell, it’s still not known who the replacement tenants will be for the former Target stores in the Plaza at Polo Park retail development at Polo Park, the Kildonan Place Shopping Centre in east Winnipeg and the Shoppers Mall in Brandon.

Here’s an update on what’s happening with the five locations:

Southdale Shopping Centre

THE new 99,000-square-foot Walmart Supercentre, complete with a full-size groceteria and an in-store pharmacy, photo centre and medical clinic, quietly opened for business last Thursday. Its arrival was good news not only for area shoppers, but for the other retail tenants in the centre.

“Any time you get an anchor such as Walmart… it’s good for the adjacent tenants like the liquor store, the Dollar Store and the Pizza Hut,” said Ken Yee, senior vice-president of the Winnipeg office of Cushman & Wakefield. “They (Walmart customers) also pick up their liquor, do their banking, get something at Dollarama and pick up a pizza.”

Grant Park Shopping Centre

THE former Grant Park outlet will be the next one to spring back to life. The mall’s general manager, Sandra Hagenaars, said renovations are well underway, and the new Canadian Tire store is scheduled to open sometime this summer.

Hagenaars said Canadian Tire only needed about 86,000 of the 120,000 square feet Target occupied. But the centre has another retailer lined up to take the remainder of the space and hopes to finalize a deal in the near future.

She wouldn’t say who it is, “but it’s someone they (Winnipeggers) will recognize,” she said.

Kildonan Place Shopping Centre

THE regional mall on Regent Avenue has taken a different approach to backfilling the 120,000-square-foot hole created by Target’s untimely demise. It plans to subdivide the space and lease it out to a number of tenants.

“It’s basically going to be made into more mall space,” general manager Peter Havens said. “We’re in close negotiations with some replacements for it. I can’t announce who it is yet… but it will be greater than 10.”

Cushman & Wakefield’s Yee said it will likely include a couple of larger tenants and some new clothing stores.

“I think they’ve got a couple of anchors totalling about 50,000 square feet that have said, ‘We’ll be there if you can break it up,’ ” he said.

Havens said the mall expects to begin renovations this April, but it may next year before the new stores start opening.

Shoppers Mall in Brandon

A spokesman for the company that manages the mall — Morguard Real Estate Investment Trust — said it also plans to carve up its approximately 108,000 square feet of former Target space into a number of different units. How many has not yet been determined.

“We’re probably looking to get some things finalized and announce something in the spring,” John Levac, the firm’s vice-president, asset management, said in an interview.

Plaza at Polo Park

THERE have been reports Canadian Tire also has been looking into the feasibility of moving its nearby St. James Street store into the former Target building. But the former owner of that franchised outlet said there were concerns the building’s unusual design — outdoor parking spaces on the ground level with the store above — might not work as a Canadian Tire store.

Officials with the plaza’s co-developers — Toronto-based Cadillac Fairview and Winnipeg’s Shindico Realty Inc. — have refused to comment on who might be looking at the space.

Finley McEwan, Cadillac Fairview’s vice-president of development, said in December they’re working on some plans, but it may be six months before they’re ready to announce anything.

Know of any newsworthy or interesting trends or developments in the local office, retail or industrial real estate sectors? Let real estate reporter Murray McNeill know at the email address below, or at 204-697-7254.

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca