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GoVertical said:
Not to be a downer, but I got an email that both the Mount Royal village and Stephen Avenue London Drugs locations are closing permanently October 10. I don't know if I'm that surprised, but sad about the one on 8 st. Does anyone know if they are building another location in the inner city, or is this just a sign of the times as I believe?
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Tough loss - although I can't imagine having a grocery - even an upmarket one in Urban Fare - and Canadian Tire opening up across the street a year or two ago helped them, with or without COVID. With Canadian Tire, there's tons of product overlap at good prices. There's long been a Best Buy and Shoppers that competes on the electronic and pharmacy fronts as well. Not to mention a major jump in online sales since COVID. Lots of tough new realities to face for retailers that don't have strong business models: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/200721/cg-a005-eng.htm

It's too bad the public rarely gets to see the inner workings of these kinds of decisions to understand why they happen and what factors were ultimately the trigger.
 
Thats sucks! I can undertsand the Beltline location closing, but the Downtown one is a bit shocker. If anything, it just frustrates me how the
Cities shortsighted vision allowed for so many office towers to go up in one centralized location. The lack of residential towers in the Core really exacerbates the pain businesses suffer from bust cycles. There's hardly anyone to keep the businesses open and running other than office workers.
 
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GoVertical said:
Even the London drugs in the Beltline is small compared to the two other shoppers drug marts. Plus I have never seen anything move from their cameras/photography section. I wonder of the space will be divided into smaller units.
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I might have the timeline off a bit, but I guessing London Drugs was looking at a lease renewal after 20 years on site and it didn't make sense anymore.

I am trying to think of what could go there.

A long time ago before the London Drugs was built, a complex with 5 or 6 smaller movie theatres was proposed on the site.

If we look at First Capital's other urban retail hubs they have assembled/built and think about leasing strategy[Yorkville (6 buildings, 370k square feet) and Liberty Village (6 buildings, 440k square feet), around 17th Ave and 8th Street they've assembled 324k square feet].

So can look at their other developments and see what the Calgary one is missing, and which categories double at other developments.

From that, for large tenants I think could end up with:
  • EQ3 (a furniture store)
  • Kids and Company (daycare)
  • a second grocer, but in a different category
  • a Winners / Nordstrom Rack/ Off 5th / Designer Shoe Warehouse
  • Completing the Canadian Tire trifecta with a Marks Work Warehouse and a relocated Atmosphere or a Sports Chek
  • a MEC that no longer cares about owning and occupying an environmentally leading building
  • a movie theatre (landmark?)
 
darwink said:
I might have the timeline off a bit, but I guessing London Drugs was looking at a lease renewal after 20 years on site and it didn't make sense anymore.

I am trying to think of what could go there.

A long time ago before the London Drugs was built, a complex with 5 or 6 smaller movie theatres was proposed on the site.

If we look at First Capital's other urban retail hubs they have assembled/built and think about leasing strategy[Yorkville (6 buildings, 370k square feet) and Liberty Village (6 buildings, 440k square feet), around 17th Ave and 8th Street they've assembled 324k square feet].

So can look at their other developments and see what the Calgary one is missing, and which categories double at other developments.

From that, for large tenants I think could end up with:
  • EQ3 (a furniture store)
  • Kids and Company (daycare)
  • a second grocer, but in a different category
  • a Winners / Nordstrom Rack/ Off 5th / Designer Shoe Warehouse
  • Completing the Canadian Tire trifecta with a Marks Work Warehouse and a relocated Atmosphere or a Sports Chek
  • a MEC that no longer cares about owning and occupying an environmentally leading building
  • a movie theatre (landmark?)
Click to expand...
I was thinking Movie theatre the minute I saw that they were closing. It would be great if the Beltline could score one.
 
I’m not at all surprised about the Mount Royal London Drugs closing. You can pretty much get everything it carries at the near by Shoppers, Canadian Tire, Best Buy or Urban Fare. And all of those are nice, bright, clean, new feeling stores. I went into the LD last week for the first time, and it was a old jumbled store that felt like an 1980’s bargain store.
 
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