Cameron Stephens Mortgage Capital Has Launched An Accelerated Lending Program To Provide An Under 15-day Commitment Process For Single Advance Inventory, Term, Bridge And Land Loans Of Up To $15 Million

The program “came out of the notion that things are taking forever and it’s difficult to get any certainty from many lenders right now,” says Steve Cameron, president and COO of Cameron Stephens. “We thought if we put this program together, hopefully it would provide a service that other lenders weren’t providing right now,” namely a path to a quick closing.

To provide the funds, 21-year-old Cameron Stephens is tapping into up to $500 million in discretionary capital from its mortgage funds, including the Cameron Stephens Mortgage Trust, Bay Street High Yield Fund, and Western Canada High Yield Fund.

Using its internal funds helps eliminate layers of approval and red tape and significantly reduces time to close, the company says.

“We thought that having a program that would allow us to deploy our private capital and give our borrowers that quick turnaround time was something that would be appreciated,” says Katie Bonar, senior vice-president, investment management at Cameron Stephens.

The Ongoing Saga Surrounding Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) Stores In Receivership And The Sale Of Multiresidential Buildings May Be Big Headline Generators For Riocan REIT, But The Trust’s Attention Remains Focused On Its Retail Portfolio Operations

The REIT also revealed during its Q2 financial conference call on Friday it will exit from five properties it held financial interests in as a partner with HBC.

RioCan is no longer providing financial resources for a stand-alone HBC store in downtown Calgary, nor those in Scarborough Town Centre, Square One Shopping Centre, CF Carrefour Laval and CF Promenades St-Bruno.

“If there isn’t a return on the capital of re-tenanting these boxes, and to the extent there’s non-recourse debt on these properties, we’re going to take a step back and give them back to the financiers,” chief operating officer John Ballantyne told RENX in an interview following the call.

They are among 12 properties in which RioCan was a partner with HBC. RioCan had already taken a $209-million writedown on the venture in its Q1 2025 financials.

Ballantyne told RENX RioCan is now operating in a market favourable to property owners.

“The underlying business is as strong as it’s ever been in the 31 years I’ve been at this company, and we’re very much looking forward to the next few years,” said Ballantyne.

“The paradigm has very much shifted to a landlord-favoured market. What we’re seeing, particularly in the major markets where we operate, is the fundamentals are extremely strong.

“Between the immigration that has happened over the last 10 years in this country and the lack of new retail space that’s been constructed, it’s only served to benefit companies like RioCan that own retail and grocery-anchored sites in major markets.”

Occupancy and leasing remain strong
Toronto-headquartered RioCan owns, manages and develops necessity-based and mixed-use properties. It owned a portfolio of 178 properties with an aggregate net leasable area of approximately 32 million square feet as of June 30.

About 85 per cent of those properties have a grocery component and the retail portfolio has a committed occupancy rate of 98.2 per cent.

RioCan’s retention rate of 91.6 per cent reflects an effective balance between upgrading tenant quality and preserving existing strong tenancies.

RioCan recorded 1.3 million square feet of leasing in the three months ended June 30, including 1.2 million square feet of renewals. The trust achieved a blended leasing spread of 20.6 per cent, with a new leasing spread of 51.5 per cent and a renewal leasing spread of 17.4 per cent.

“Our centres really serve the everyday shopping needs of the Canadian consumer, between grocery, pharma, value and banking,” Ballantyne said.

“There’s still a strong demand from the three national grocers and what we’re seeing from the value side — from the TJX banners and Dollarama — is when we have boxes available, they’re typically first in line to take these spaces.”

Infill retail intensification
Due to this demand, a lack of new development for economic reasons, and retailer willingness to pay higher rents, RioCan is intensifying existing properties with the additions of:

37,000 square feet at the 880,000-square-foot East Hills Shopping Centre in Calgary, with new tenants including Value Village and a bank branch;
18,000 square feet at the 839,000-square-foot RioCan Windfields in Oshawa, Ont., mainly for food uses;
a combined Winners and HomeSense store that’s almost finished at the 213,077-square-foot Clarkson Crossing in Mississauga;
and a bank pad at the 384,000-square-foot Sage Hill Crossing in Calgary.
“We’re finding that these infill projects definitely pencil now and we’re getting the return on our capital to justify the development,” said Ballantyne. “We’re just going to continue to grow our sites.”

HBC stores
HBC continues to go through the receivership process, and RioCan had a relationship with 13 of its stores. The RioCan-HBC Limited Partnership was created in 2015 and represented 0.5 per cent of RioCan’s equity on June 30.

Progress is being made with the receiver for stores at Oakville Place, Georgian Mall, Tanger Outlets Ottawa (owned and managed by RioCan), as well as at Yorkdale Shopping Centre, Devonshire Mall and stand-alone downtown locations in Montreal, Vancouver and Ottawa.

Ballantyne anticipates the situations to be resolved by the end of the year.

“Particularly for the three boxes that we manage, given what’s going on in the retail market and the lack of available space, we’ve had retailers talking to us about those opportunities for the last number of years,” Ballantyne said.

Whether those three locations are leased to single operators or the spaces are divided for multiple tenants, Ballantyne said they’ll be improved and generate a “very satisfactory” return.

New land development remains on hold
While RioCan is involved with approximately 20.6 million square feet of land zoned for new development, and another three million square feet for which zoning applications have been submitted, it doesn’t plan to move on it over the next two years.

“We consider that all to be future value,” Ballantyne said. “And at this point in time, it’s not part of our strategy to start putting money into this program.”

Ballantyne acknowledged Canada’s housing shortage will continue and, while there’s not much new construction happening now, that’s expected to change in the coming years. At that point RioCan would either sell its land or take a minor ownership interest with development partners.

Spending less is part of achieving RioCan’s goal of solidifying its balance sheet to pay down debt and have funds available to buy back its own stock, since the REIT believes its market price doesn’t fully reflect the underlying value and future prospects of its business.

Dispositions and acquisitions
RioCan is also monetizing its apartment buildings. After selling its 50 per cent stake in Toronto’s Strada to CAPREIT for $23.9 million late last year, it agreed to sell its 50 per cent interest in Ottawa’s Frontier, Latitude and Luma projects to Killam Apartment REIT for $136 million and its 50 per cent share in Calgary’s Brio to Boardwalk REIT for $37.4 million in May.

As of June 30, RioCan had a major market multiresidential portfolio of 14 buildings with 3,396 units and a fair value of $1.1 billion. The buildings have an average age of four years and are 94.7-per cent leased.

One of the 14, located in Toronto, has conditional sales status.

“We consider the portfolio to be one-of-a-kind in Canada,” Ballantyne said. “It’s all new product with modern amenities, no rent control and really low capital requirements to run them.

“We don’t see products like this hit the market too often. So we feel like it’s a pristine portfolio and, to the extent that we can hit the sales price targets that we’ve set on each asset, we will go forward and sell them.”

RioCan also completed $53 million of lower-growth retail asset dispositions in Q2, including a Cineplex-anchored property in Edmonton, a single-tenant property, and part of an open-air retail site in Quebec.

Conversely, on April 1, RioCan acquired a 90 per cent interest in phases two and three of the Market rental community — comprised of a 16-storey, 297-apartment building — in the Montreal suburb of Laval for $125.3 million.

The acquisition was pursuant to a forward purchase agreement announced during the purchase of Phase I in 2022.

Condominium program is winding down
RioCan’s condominium program is approaching its conclusion, as construction has been completed on all of the buildings and interim or final closings are underway.

Condo and townhouse developments are expected to provide sales revenue of between $340 million and $350 million this year and between $155 million and $165 million from 2026 to 2028.

Source CoStar. Click here for the full story.

Guinness World Records Recognizes Mark Set By Canadian Solar Panel Facade Maker

Daniel Hadizadeh wants building owners to get a charge out of their properties by adding solar panels as a method of harnessing sunlight to be converted into power.

Hadizadeh founded Mitrex Solar a decade ago to manufacture and install solar cladding panels on facades. Now, approximately 20 structures in Canada, the United States and the Middle East have been outfitted with the preassembled cladding.

“The sun shines every day, and not being able to harness it started bugging me. So about 10 years ago I started doing research and development, and five years ago we started manufacturing,” he said in an interview. Adding the panels to new properties increases building costs by roughly 5% to 10%, but in turn, they can help a property owner save up to 30% in energy costs, Hadizadeh added.

Mitrex set a mark recognized by Guinness World Records last month for its installation of the world’s largest solar panel mural on The SunRise apartment complex in downtown Edmonton. The firm said its solar cladding also adorns buildings, including 18 Queen St. in Kingston, Ontario,1451 Wellington in Ottawa, and 1154 Wilson and 587 Avonhead Road in Toronto. The panels have also recently been added to the Taza Marketing Centre, part of the major Taza real estate development west of Calgary.

Guinness, a company that says it’s the “global authority on all things record-breaking,” is widely recognized as a source to track and verify such achievements.

Mitrex’s customers include hospitals, airports and real estate investment trusts, Hadizadeh said.

As with most real estate development, location plays a major role in the business, as not all areas of Canada receive the same amount of sunshine as places such as Iran, where Hadizadeh was born before moving to Canada as a child.

Calgary leads all Canadian cities with 333 sunny days per year, according to weatherstats.ca, while Winnipeg comes in second among large cities with 318 days per year. Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa all get 303 sunny days while Quebec City gets 291 days of sunshine, Vancouver 288 and St. John’s in Newfoundland and Labrador 270, according to weatherstats.ca.

Mitrex said it has, as a result, seen good results in Alberta and Winnipeg, as well as in Halifax and across Ontario. Customers typically include hospitals, airports and larger residential investors.

Hadizadeh said Mitrex Solar has a patent on the installation process and keeps production costs down by creating the panels at its warehouse in Toronto.

Source CoStar. Click here for the full story.

Toronto’s Top Buyers Drive Market Momentum In 2025

Toronto’s commercial real estate investment sales market has softened in 2025 compared to recent years.

However, this lower-sales trend is not uniform across all asset classes. The decline has been driven by a significant pullback in office transactions, which continue to face demand challenges from hybrid work and elevated vacancy rates.

In contrast, sales of retail properties have held up surprisingly well when considering the recessionary risks on the horizon and relatively tight capital markets. Furthermore, sales of industrial and multifamily properties, though down from the highs of their recent bull runs, remain consistent with pre-pandemic levels.

So far in the first half of this year, three buyers have emerged as the most active players in the Toronto market: Primaris REIT, Crestpoint Real Estate Investments Ltd. and Dream Industrial REIT. Together, they have invested more than $1 billion across 25 properties since the beginning of January.

Primaris REIT leads with $375 million in acquisitions attributed to a single portfolio deal that comprised seven properties. The vast majority of the transaction value, 95%, was allocated to retail, with the remaining 5% allocated to office. Additionally, Primaris REIT recently acquired Limeridge Mall in Hamilton, which falls outside of the GTA.

This retail mall sold for $416 million, further underscoring the REIT’s ambitious investment activity in the retail space, notwithstanding some negative sentiment associated with the recent closure of the Hudson’s Bay Co.

Crestpoint Real Estate Investments Ltd. follows with $373 million invested involving two transactions and seven properties. Crestpoint’s total spending so far this year has focused on industrial real estate. Its top deal was the acquisition of 7900 Airport Road in Brampton from Unilever for $253 million. Additionally, the firm purchased a six-property portfolio in Mississauga from Desjardins Insurance for $120 million.

Dream Industrial REIT rounds out the top three buyers of GTA commercial property with $316.7 million involving 13 properties in two transactions. A total of 5% of Dream Industrial REIT’s spending was allocated to land, with the remaining 95% to existing industrial buildings.

Its most notable purchase was of an 11-property portfolio in Eastern GTA from Pure Industrial for $257.5 million. The REIT’s other transaction consisted of two properties in Oakville, which were purchased from Crestpoint Real Estate Investments Ltd.

With the top three buyers responsible for 20% of year-to-date activity, compared to a five-year average of just 7.4%, the data points to a market where a small group of well-capitalized players are driving momentum amid broader investor hesitation.

Source CoStar. Click here for the full story.

Some Property Pros Are More Optimistic Over Prospects For Rest Of Year

More than nine out of 10 Avison Young professionals in Canada foresee commercial real estate activity increasing or at least holding steady in the second half of 2025, according to a mid-year survey by the real estate services firm.

Only 7% of Avison Young brokers who responded to the in-house survey had a negative outlook for the sector and predicted that activity would decline.

Avison Young, a global brokerage firm with its headquarters in Toronto, said that while the first half of 2025 was marked by uncertainty and driven by political shifts and macroeconomic pressures, a growing sense of momentum and opportunity is emerging across the country.

“When I look at this what I see is going into last fall we started seeing green shoots and improvement and that was based on our transaction volumes starting to improve and some of asset classes getting more attention than they were before,” said Mark Fieder, a principal and president of Avison Young Canada, in an interview with CoStar News. He also said the reaction from the real estate company’s professionals is an extension of what they are hearing from clients.

“It’s a much broader opinion being filtered through our brokers,” Fieder said. “It’s a pretty broad representation, and it’s also a national perspective.”

The survey comes as Canada’s office vacancy rates are still elevated compared to historical levels, according to CoStar Market Analytics. “Continued momentum in leasing and net absorption remains necessary to bring the office market back into balance,” CoStar said in a recent report. “However, growing uncertainty and economic disruptions brought on by the US trade war at the end of the first quarter are now threatening that progress.”

While the trade relationship between the two countries continues to change, including in the past week, CoStar said in another report that as of March, “underlying economic data reflecting distribution demand, such as container and port traffic, have certainly eased, but have not capitulated.”

Across all real estate asset classes, 45% of survey respondents said they expect activity to climb in the second half of the year, while another 48% said it will be at the same level as in the first half.

Fieder said falling interest rates have helped drive optimism in the sector, but the battle with the United States over tariffs has also impacted the market.

“It’s really about the uncertainty,” said Fieder. “Everybody is talking about it. It’s the uncertainty, we know tariffs are not going to be as bad as we thought they would be.”

Avison Young’s survey results suggest a shift toward higher capitalization rates. The real estate company said, “Investors and occupiers alike are recalibrating their strategies in response to shifting demand patterns, supply chain adjustments, and changing workplace behaviours.”

By asset class, respondents were most optimistic about the office sector, with 54% predicting a better second half and 46% seeing no change. The firm said the high level of optimism also reflects the sector’s recovery from a low point.

The industrial sector, which had been on a roll of strong performances over the past several years, received the most negative outlook. 17% of survey respondents expected the market to be down, and only 35% predicted a better second half. A little less than half, or 48%, forecast the status quo.

“There were things that people paused at the beginning of the year, not knowing, but now they have to carry on with business,” said Marie-France Benoit, principal and director of market intelligence with Avison Young Canada, referring to the impact of the tariff battle, in an interview.

“A lot of companies are now firming up their return to office policies. They need more space,” Benoit said. “There were anecdotes [about companies needing more space]. But now we are starting to see it in the data. It’s not a lot, and there is space to be absorbed, but there is no new construction.”

As for Fieder, he said retail, industrial and multifamily remain popular acquisition targets for buyers, but as demand for office space shifts, he expects the office recovery will lead to more investor interest in that asset class.

“The financial sector is calling back its people [to the office],” he said. “It’s the worst-kept secret that those institutions are in the market for new space. It is pure absorption, and that is starting to take hold.

“People have been home to some degree for five years and a lot of companies have hired people in five years and they haven’t addressed their office space needs. Not just in Toronto, but in other major markets as well.”

Source CoStar. Click here for the full story.

Decathlon To Close Five Toronto-area Sporting Goods Stores

French chain to cease operations in Vaughan, Brampton, Burlington, Markham and Scarborough, considers opening smaller stores

Decathlon is closing five of its 20 stores in Canada, all in the Toronto area, after the French sporting goods chain expanded aggressively following its arrival in 2018.

The sporting goods retailer said it will close its stores in Vaughan, Brampton, Burlington, Markham and Scarborough, which range in size between 35,000 and 65,000 square feet.

The retailer also said it may look to open other stores in the Greater Toronto Area in smaller spaces.

“We are also considering a return to brick-and-mortar stores with a smaller footprint in the GTA,” it said in a statement. Decathlon did not indicate when it planned to close the stores.

The planned closings come as the Toronto area’s retail market, which contains about 300 million square feet, has an overall vacancy rate of just 1.5%, according to CoStar Market Analytics. However, the closure of 32 Hudson’s Bay department stores in Ontario earlier this year is expected to push the retail vacancy rate up slightly in Canada’s most populous province.

The pending Decathlon vacancies could provide competition for several retail landlords, including La Caisse, formerly known as Ivanhoe Cambridge, Cadillac Fairview, and Oxford Properties, that are working to backfill the Hudson’s Bay outlets that were vacated this year in the same shopping centres in Burlington, Markham and Scarborough.

Decathlon’s competitors in Canada include Walmart, Canadian Tire, Mountain Equipment Co-op, Sail, Plein Air and Sporting Life.

Decathlon operates 1,700 stores in 72 countries. The global retailer based in Villeneuve d’Ascq, France, named Javier López CEO earlier this year, replacing Barbara Martin Coppola, who had led the company since 2022. Nicolas Roucou serves as the named CEO of Decathlon Canada.

Source CoStar. Click here for the full story.

Couche-tard To Add Circle K Stores As Global Chain Ponders Expanding Offerings

While Couche-Tard executives have been trying to hammer out a megadeal to acquire the 7-Eleven convenience store chain from Seven & i Holdings, construction workers have been wielding tools in an effort to build more Couche-Tard stores.

The Laval, Quebec-based convenience store owner of the Circle K convenience store empire aims to complete 41 new stores in the upcoming quarters, after delivering 97 new stores in the recently finished fiscal 2025, according to its recent earnings report. Couche-Tard said it built or relocated 20 stores during the 12 months through April.

Couche-Tard did not specify the locations of the new outlets, but the expansion would include 40 franchised locations in Upstate New York, according to a November LinkedIn post by Justin Shelton, Circle K director of finance and planning, global franchise.

The Couche-Tard chain grew from a single store owned by current Chairman Alain Bouchard in 1980 to nearly 17,000 stores worldwide. The chain has over 7,100 outlets in 48 states of the United States under the Circle K and Holiday banners.

In the United States, government regulators are requiring Couche Tard to sell an estimated 2,000 locations as part of the deal to purchase the 85,000 stores of the 7-Eleven chain from Seven & i of Japan. Roughly 13,000 of those outlets are in the United States and Canada.

In a separate deal, Couche-Tard sold 35 stores in Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania to MapCo in return for government approval for Couche-Tard to acquire 270 stores from the GetGo Cafe & Market chain for about US$1.6 billion, as reported in CoStar News.

Both GetGo and 7-Eleven customarily offer more prepared food items than Couche-Tard and Circle K, most notably in Japan. The possible combination of the two chains has created speculation that Circle K could also increasingly embrace the prepared food trend.

Food sales in Circle K’s more than 5,000 European stores amount to roughly 40% of the overall purchases. The total drops 15% to 25% in North America, according to the National Association of Convenience Stores

Alimentation Couche-Tard co-founder Alain Bouchard has said that North American stores offer less fresh food because they have more restaurants to compete with, making it more difficult to attract a significant market share of the prepared food sector.

However, Bouchard has also expressed the ambition of adding more food offerings, as seen in the company program branded FFF, for fresh food fast.

“We have to transform ourselves as an industry,” Bouchard said in a rare public appearance at a trade industry interview conference in 2023. “If we stay the way we are, we will disappear. We have to adapt our product mix. The millennials are different, and they are asking for a different supply.”

Bouchard, now 76, is Quebec’s wealthiest person with an estimated net worth of US$6.7 billion and could not be reached for comment, as CoStar News has made a series of unanswered telephone calls and emails. A receptionist at the Laval headquarters of the operation said that Bouchard rarely comes to the office.

One industry expert said that Couche-Tard could eventually go along with the prepared food concept.

“People are much more open to trying new things and experiencing new tastes and the internet probably accelerated that with social media,” said Jeff Lenard, vice president of industry advocacy at the National Association of Convenience Stores, in an interview.

Prepared food already represents 26% of sales at convenience stores in the United States, according to Lenard, as shoppers are increasingly demanding something other than packaged foods.

“The traditional supply chain for convenience stores was limited delivery limited distribution as little as once every two weeks, so the genesis of the industry was focused on packaged goods that had a long shelf life and little spoilage. It made perfect sense for decades, but things have changed,” said Lenard.

If Couche-Tard takes over the 7-Eleven chain, the combined operation would have roughly 20,000 of the estimated 150,000 convenience stores in the United States. Over 90,000 convenience stores in the United States are operated by independent organizations.

Source CoStar. Click here for the full story.

Canada Infrastructure Bank Provides Loan To Fund Energy Efficiency Upgrades For Commercial Properties

Crown corporation completes $50 million loan to Dream Industrial to upgrade 34 warehouses

Dream Industrial Real Estate Investment Trust closed a $50 million loan with Canada Infrastructure Bank, a federal Crown corporation, to retrofit 34 industrial buildings in Alberta, Ontario and Quebec.

Canadian Infrastructure Bank, or CIB, said the investment in Dream Industrial will support its work to upgrade mid- and large-bay warehouses used for urban logistics, light industrial and distribution. The building upgrades will include mechanical and electrical systems, renewable energy generation, heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, fuel switching, energy management technology, building envelope and electric vehicle charging, CIB said.

CIB funds energy retrofits nationwide to help reduce carbon emissions from commercial buildings, a property sector the bank said accounts for 18% of Canada’s total emissions.

“Investing in high-impact retrofits, including solar installations, aligns with Dream Industrial’s strategy to invest in opportunities that produce attractive returns while improving the sustainability and resiliency of our assets, and help reduce emissions to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon built environment,” Dream Industrial President and CEO Alexander Sannikov said in a statement.

Dream’s retrofit projects are expected to create approximately 630 jobs and generate 14,500 megawatt hours of clean electricity from installed renewable power generation, such as solar panels, CIB said.

“Dream Industrial’s new initiative is proof that our building retrofits program is succeeding in helping Canada’s building owners to upgrade their properties and reduce energy use at scale,” Canada Infrastructure Bank CEO Ehren Cory said in a statement.

Source CoStar. Click here for the full story.

Toronto Investor Affirms Commitment To Suburban Office Sector

Commercial real estate investment firm Crown Realty Partners affirmed its commitment to the suburban office sector with the purchase of two properties in Toronto’s southwest suburbs.

The Toronto-based company said it acquired 1111 and 1122 International Blvd., a pair of seven-storey office properties in Burlington, about 60 kilometres southwest of Toronto. The purchase of the two buildings that encompass 271,571 square feet was made on behalf of Crown’s fifth value-add fund, CR V LP.

Both buildings were reported to be fully leased at the time of sale, according to CoStar information.

“This acquisition reflects Crown’s conviction that well-located, well-built assets, when paired with great management, will thrive in any cycle,” said Emily Hanna, managing partner of investments at Crown, in a statement announcing the purchase.

Crown did not disclose what it paid for the properties or the seller, but CoStar data indicates that the assets traded on June 17, and that 1111 International Nominee, a company tied to Fengate Asset Management, was the seller.

CoStar data shows the Greater Golden Horseshoe region that includes Burlington has outperformed Toronto’s office market with an average office vacancy rate of 5.5% and an availability rate of 6.5%, well below the national rates of 10% for office vacancy and 11.8% for availability.

“This comparative resilience is supported by several factors: more accessible and affordable parking, shorter commute times, and smaller firms having greater control over their return-to-office strategies, independent of global practices affecting Toronto-based headquarters,” CoStar said in a report.

The latest deal is the seventh for Crown Partners’ $260 million investment fund, which is backed by institutional investors and focused on generating value through active leasing, operational improvements and targeted capital upgrades.

For the record
The sale of the two Burlington office buildings was arranged by an investment sales team at Avison Young consisting of Jonathan Yuan and Richard Chilcott, a pair of principals and sales representatives, and Ankit Jindal, a director of the firm’s Capital Markets Group.

Source CoStar. Click here for the full story.

Cadillac Fairview Relies On Its Eateries To Boost Profitability

Tasty food offerings cited as landlord dominates list of Canada’s top money-making shopping malls

Mall food needs to be good, Lillian Tummonds says. She adds that successful menus are a central ingredient to Cadillac Fairview’s success in dominating an annual survey of Canada’s most profitable shopping centres.

The mall owner’s senior vice president of retail cites good restaurants as one of the main reasons Cadillac Fairview owns 13 of Canada’s 25 most profitable shopping centres.

“We focus on food and beverage and feel that it is part of the offering of what our shoppers are looking for,” Tummonds, at Cadillac Fairview, said in an interview. She also praised the newly arrived Auric King Chinese restaurant and its “lovely dim sum” that recently opened in the Toronto-area CF Markville Mall.

Culinary appeal is only part of Cadillac Fairview’s recipe to get shoppers spending money in the malls that dominated this year’s ICSC Canadian Property Performance Data.

Cadillac Fairview, the real estate arm of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, keeps a finger on the pulse of its shoppers, as evidenced by the popularity of its Toronto’s Eaton Centre, as well as Pacific Centre and Richmond Centre, both in the Vancouver area and the CF Chinook Centre in Calgary, malls that filled out spots two to five in Canada’s profitability rankings.

The four CF malls trailed only Oxford Properties’ Yorkdale Shopping Centre in Toronto, ranked Canada’s most profitable retail centre with average sales of $2,300 per square foot.

The secret to CF’s mall success lies in “keeping up and listening to our customers to ensure that the malls that we operate offer what they are looking for,” says Tummonds. The company conducts focus groups and looks for “trends in the marketplace and seeing what retailers are resonating (with shoppers).”

Tummonds notes that different shoppers seek different experiences. Some dutifully come to check items off a shopping list, while others “want a complete experience, grab a meal, see a movie, have an afternoon experience that includes food and beverages. For me, I might go in with my list and on other days, depending on who I’m going with, it might be for an afternoon bite and a coffee.”

Cadillac Fairview is among the mall owners aiming to add residential units to many of its shopping centres, including the Carrefour Laval, where CF bought out its 50% partner last year for $553 million, as reported by CoStar News. Tummonds says that the retail and residential mixes have one thing in common: “building a community.”

CF is also attempting to tackle the vacancies left by the bankruptcy of the Hudson’s Bay chain, after the venerable department store went bust. “I was born and raised in Canada, and we had all hoped for a different outcome,” said Tummonds, who notes that CF’s plans for the vacant retail outlets remain to be determined. “It’s too early to tell, but we have constantly evolved our retail experience to ensure the long-term success of our shopping centres. These boxes, locations, are not different.”

The departure of Hudson’s Bay is not without precedent. Tummonds notes that the Seattle-based Nordstrom retail chain also left a large retail space vacant at Eaton Centre in Toronto in June 2023. Cadillac Fairview recently found a way to fill the space. “We are welcoming Simons and Nike intoour (former) Nordstrom box. We have done it before and have been successful at recreating a vibrant retail mix, and we are looking at (similar) opportunities in these locations,” she said.

Source CoStar. Click here for the full story.