New tenants in store for Target site

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/01/2018 (2867 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s been close to three years that the 120,000-square-foot, two-storey building space occupying the prime retail location at the southeast corner of St. James Street and St. Matthews Avenue has sat empty. But it’s now about to have a new family move in.

Construction is now underway to build a new entrance that can accommodate three new tenants, with one of them almost certainly being a Winners/HomeSense combo-store.

Although none of the parties concerned would confirm it, the identity of one of the three new tenants was revealed in a revised development plan approved by the Assiniboia Community Committee in November.

It will close the circle on one of the most egregious bits of development in the history of retailing in Canada.

Target stores operated in Canada for less than two years, costing the company more than $5 billion and disrupting the lives of around 17,000 employees.

The distinctly designed location near Polo Park — the two storey building has parking on the first floor — was maybe one of the biggest blunders of the entire 133-store debacle.

It was only occupied for a few months before the company announced in January 2015 that it was exiting the Canadian market.

Because of its unusual design and large footprint, it has been a challenge for Shindico Realty, one of the co-developers of the Plaza at Polo Park site, along with Cadillac Fairview, to find new tenants.

Justin Zarnowski, an official with Shindico, said there is several months worth of work required before any new tenants are able to get into the building to fit out the interior.

“It’s a complicated building and we did not build it,” Zarnowski said.

“There is some structural work that needs to take place.”

The building is being divided to accommodate three tenant spaces of roughly equal size on the second floor and a two-storey, 3,800-square-foot addition is being added to the south side of the building that will include two escalators, an elevator and two sets of stairs. The development plan revision also calls for significant additional landscaping to take place on the eight-acre site.

Zarnowski said a small extension that’s being built is required to allow for the new multi-store configuration.

Susie Nick, a spokeswoman for the Canadian division of TJX Companies Inc., the company that owns the Winners, HomeSense and Marshalls chains, said the company does not officially announce new openings until closer to the actual opening date. But she voiced no objection to the suggestion that the information of an eventual store opening at this site would be published.

Last April, a Marshalls/HomeSense combo store opened in the reconfigured former Target store in Kildonan Place Shopping Centre. That was a 45,000-square-foot store.

A Marshalls store is already operating in the Polo Park area in a relatively new building.

One real estate broker, who asked that his name not be used, said it’s likely that the Marshalls location still has many years left on its lease in what was a brand new building when it moved in.

Winners also has a store in the same area, only two blocks away, on the southeast corner of Ellice Avenue and Empress Street. However, an industry professional speculated that it has far less time left on its lease — maybe only a couple of years.

Zarnowski said they do not yet have finalized transactions on either of the other two spaces.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca