Winners all around from Civic Centre Plaza

The new Civic Centre Plaza will be nothing but good for Moose Jaw and consumers from the city and district. The $25 million U-shaped development with three buildings and the open end of the U facing Main Street will open the space towards the Town ’N’ Country Mall. More importantly, the 72,000 square feet of retail and commercial space will attract new businesses to the city. Those new businesses will help to stem the flow of customers to that place east of us. Principals at the project announcement indicated several restaurant chains have interests in the section of the plaza overlooking the golf course. No names are available yet as the leases have not been signed. This alone raises the hope of many diners in Moose Jaw for some national food places to locate here. The initial drawings portray a bank on one end of the U. Again, no names but there are at least two downtown banks without adequate parking lots to serve their customers. Take your pick on which one might re-locate. Now some critics will say having a bank move to the Civic Centre Plaza will be terrible for the downtown. Having all the banks close together makes no real sense. After all, how many of us go interest or savings rate shopping from bank to bank? Re-location of a bank will leave another retail space in the relatively cheap rent downtown for new local entrepreneurs to set up shop. The Town ’N’ Country Mall may not be at as big a competitive disadvantage as you think. That $25 million plaza will cost just shy of $350 a square foot. The Town ’N’ Country Mall was purchased for a lot less than that. Its leases can be competitive. And the increase in lease rates overall could make the existing mall’s renovations more feasible. Rumours of which retailers will lease space in the new plaza abound as they always do in Moose Jaw. One such unconfirmed rumour has a big box retailer specializing in food and other goods coming. That would make the consumer happy with prices wars. And it could spur on the development of a Wal-Mart expansion. The potential for more development is considerable as competition for the retail dollar heats up. One of the challenges in this project and any that should follow is accommodation and services for the construction crews that will work here for the next two or three years. Add that to the already strained housing scene and you have demand for more apartments and residences. Seeing the old Civic Centre disappear will be sad for those of us with warm and fond memories of the place. The plaza design will incorporate the structure’s main features. The building walls will have the pillar design on the outside. The flat roof will be designed with a curve at the back, topped by glass to make it look like the end wall of the Civic Centre The Civic Centre itself will disappear. But the developer has plans to recycle concrete from the building into other uses. Cost will be around $1 million — a cost the city faced if no developer came forward. The city gets just over $2 million for the eight–acre site, in the range of the $2 million to $2.5 million estimates from five years ago. Where will the $2 million go? Good question. The most likely place is the city reserve for land acquisition. That reserve is intended to buy land so the city can continue to sell commercial and residential lots. The city has three options — to stay in the land business, leave it all to private developers, or do a mix of city and private development as is being done with residential land. Another option for city council would be to use the money to help fund the city’s share of the new hospital, or pay down some of the multiplex debt. That debate will be interesting.

Ron Walter can be reached at ronjoy@sasktel.net