Village-style retail mecca planned

April 16, 2008
Winnipeg Free Press
Written by: Murray McNeill

Winnipeg shoppers may soon get a taste of the kind of open-air, village-styled shopping centres that are becoming all the rage in other parts of North America.

The two firms behind the long-awaited redevelopment of the former Winnipeg Arena-CTV properties at Polo Park are hoping to introduce a new shopping centre concept to the city that is a cross betweeen a retail power centre and the popular open-air, main-street themed "lifestyle centres" that have been popping up all over the United States and in larger Canadian cities like Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver.

Lifestyle centres, which began emerging as a North American retail trend in the late 1990s, try to recreate the kind of main-street shopping experience that once defined small-town life in Canada and the United States.

They do that by including such features as two-storey storefronts, brick sidewalks, outdoor fountains and plazas, plenty of plants and trees, park benches and ornamental street lights.

While the proposed new $30-million-to-$35-million Winnipeg development won't be quite that ambitious, a spokesman for the developers -- Toronto-based Cadillac Fairview Corp. Ltd. and Winnipeg-based Shindico Inc. -- said they hope to incorporate a least some of those elements in their project.

"We're determined to make a beautiful development, not an average, suburban retail development." said Finley McEwen, Cadillac Fairview's vice-president of development.

Winnipeggers have been waiting for more than two years to find out what would become of the arena-CTV sites, which are arguably two of the city's most prized retail properties because of their proximity to Polo Park Shopping Centre.

Shindico president Sandy Shindleman said in February of last year that they hoped to break ground in 2007 and be ready for occupancy in 2008.

But those plans were put on ice when Cadillac Fairview had a change of heart about the kind of shopping centre it wanted to build, deciding to build up, rather than outward.

"It (building vertically) is a better way to build retail," McEwen said. It reduces urban sprawl and is more architecturally pleasing. The whole idea is to try and create a sense of community instead of those gawd-awful power centres."

The biggest challenge, he said, is finding retailers who will buy into the lifestyle-centre concept. Most are wed to the idea of single-storey stores.

"We don't know if we're going to be successful," he said, but noted they are talking to several retailers who have expressed an interest in getting involved. He said if they can't find enough retailers to make it work, they may have to go with a more traditional power-centre development.

"But we really hope we don't have to do that. We're determined to do this right."

McEwan said the shopping centre would likely be developed in several phases spread out over the next three or four years, beginning this fall.

He said there could be up to three clusters of stores in the development, with three or four retailers in each cluster. The former two-hectare arena site would be developed first, followed by the 1.2-hectare CTV site.

Shindleman said the types of retailers they envision going into the centre include a pharmacy, a variety of fashion retailers, and service-oriented businesses such as dentist or doctor's offices.

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca

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