City Centre mall to get an exterior upgrade
Goal for next few years is ‘getting our exterior aligned with the interior’: GM
After successfully moving both its food courts out of the basement last year, the Edmonton City Centre mall now wants to ramp up the facility’s outside sex appeal.
A major Shoppers Drug Mart offering groceries is scheduled to open next March at the corner of 101 Street and stretching along 102A Avenue, Olympia Trencevski, general manager of the Edmonton downtown portfolio for Oxford Properties, said Tuesday.
She’s also planning changes to the mall’s west side and at the corner of 100 Street and 102 Avenue, although she wouldn’t provide details.
“The whole idea of the next few years is getting our exterior aligned with the interior,” she told the Edmonton chapter of NAIOP, the commercial real estate development association.
“The exterior needs that sexy feel, that appealing feel.”
Trencevski is looking at upgrading the strip between the 102 Avenue entrance near the Hudson’s Bay store and the north exit, a route she expects many people will take to reach Rogers Place once the new LRT line opens in 2020.
“My terms right now are make it ‘Wow’ and delightful … It’s got to speak to you better. It’s got to be more attractive, it’s got to have more vitality, it’s got to have better uses — food uses, more restaurants, more, maybe, boutiques.”
Last year, the mall closed the aging food courts in the bottom levels of the east and west sections of the mall — originally separate properties — and opened the top-floor Elevate Food Fare in November.
It has 503 seats, 200 fewer than the two previous sites, and the number of restaurants was cut to 11 from 23, but in the last six months, revenue is up 3.5 per cent, retail property manager Lindsay Whyte said.
The mall is looking at adding seats and allowing people in the adjoining towers to reserve tables in off-peak hours for meetings, she said.
“We have more people coming up to the food court that are office (workers) that will come, grab lunch and take it back to their desk … We see a lot of people coming up just enjoying the natural light, having their breakfast, and then we see coffee meetings in the afternoon.”
As part of the $41.3-million renovation, most of the basement will be converted to parking. The only shop left at that level will be a larger, 1,000-square-metre Dollarama. Staff received 3,000 calls from people wondering when the discount store would return.
About 65 tenants, or roughly one-third of the total, will move in, relocate or renovate by 2018, and there aren’t any vacancies left, although some space is empty as part of larger deals or construction, said Trencevski, who also hopes to extend the mall’s hours.