Champlain Place, N.B.'s largest mall, sold to Montreal-based property company
General manager says it will be business as usual for the next while
New Brunswick's largest mall, Champlain Place in Dieppe, has been sold but there will be very few obvious changes, said general manager Brian MacMullen.
"At Champlain Place, it's going to be business as usual. There should be no noticeable change to our customers or retailers. It's really just a change of ownership and that's it."
Montreal-based Westcliff Group bought the 784,372-square-foot mall, saying it "perfectly aligns with Westcliff's strategy," according to the company's vice-president and head of leasing, Nicolas D'Aoust, in a statement on its website.
MacMullin said the mall's current formula is working so there's no need to make any immediate changes — beyond the name, which will become Place Champlain Place to reflect the "bilingual nature of our customer base," said MacMullin.
It's unclear whether the shopping mall was even on the market before the sale. MacMullen referred the question to his new employer, Westcliff Group, which referred the question to the seller, Cadillac Fairview, but the company has not responded to a CBC request.
Meanwhile, two Saint John malls that have been on the market for months have not sold.
McAllister Place was listed for sale in June, while Brunswick Square has been on the market since early April.
Graham Procter, senior vice-president of asset management with Primaris REIT, which owns McAllister Place, said "the property is still for sale, but nothing has materialized."
An official with Slate Asset Management, which owns Brunswick Square, said there was "nothing to share on this right now."
Bill MacAvoy, managing director of Cushman & Wakefield Atlantic, the contracted leasing agent for Brunswick Square, said having three malls for sale in a small province like New Brunswick is more of a coincidence than a sign of trouble for malls in the future. In fact, he said, it's the opposite.
"Malls absolutely have a future," said MacAvoy.
The fact that buyers "are coming forward and stepping up and acquiring them, at numbers that the sellers are willing to dispose of them for, is really a good news story for the health and the future of retail."
MacAvoy said that in the sale of Champlain Place, along with three malls that have sold in the Halifax area in the last two years, "the offers that have been coming in have met, or in many cases exceeded, the vendor's expectations."
'Business as usual'
Jim Cormier, the Atlantic region director of the Retail Council of Canada, doesn't expect many changes for the retailers of Champlain Place.
Cormier said "there's always some trepidation whenever there's a sale of a mall."
He said his members would consider it "business as usual until they find out that it's not.
"So chances are with any sale, you're still going to be able to do your business with the new owners, just as you were with the former owners."
Cormier said malls have been changing in recent years in an effort to attract new customers and convince online shoppers to head to the mall.
"So one of the ways that we're seeing across Canada and in the U.S. of malls trying to attract people back is by offering more experiences within them. All the days of it just being a transactional place where you can shop indoors and hit multiple retail establishments — it's more than that."
He said some malls have attracted large restaurants, added "comfier seating areas where they want you to linger and they want you to stay," and even added cinemas — something that malls had moved away from, although they were common decades ago.
MacMullen said Champlain Place has been full in terms of retail tenants for many years.
"The last few years have been very positive. We're mainly fully leased. We've seen great growth in our sales productivity, foot traffic is strong. Yeah, so things are going very well here," he said.
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