With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1515520
27 B C B U S I N E S S . C A M A R C H 2 0 24 R i c h m o n d C e n t r e : C a d ill a c F air v i e w ; illu s t r a t i o n : i S t o c k / f il o the making. There are 1,100 apartments in several towers under construction on the west side in the first phase of rede- velopment. And Cadillac Fairview (pg. 14), the powerhouse real-estate empire owned by the Ontario Teachers' Pension Fund, is reimagining the mall as a differ- ent kind of place. "We believe strongly that all our developments need to have a town cen- tre, a significant area that brings together all the elements," says Brian Salpeter, senior vice-president, development, at CF, as it calls itself these days. "And we will always look for a designed public plaza that is an amenity for everyone: farmers markets, art shows." It's an approach the organization, which owns Pacific Centre Mall and a number of other top-producing malls across Canada, has found pays off. CF's Carrefour Laval, in Quebec, has a lush gar- den that has turned into its own attraction, popular for wedding photos or just sitting and breathing. "We look to replicate that," says Salpeter. As part of that, the mix of activities inside the new mall village is changing. So far, no mall in Vancouver has incorporated as much as Washington's Bellevue Square, seen as the uto- pian ideal, with its high- end hotels and the Bellevue Arts Center built right in. But, still, things are differ- ent. Mall operators are now interested in independent businesses in a way they never were before. Now, instead of the endless rows of chain stores that made every mall in North America seem like endlessly replicat- ing clones—Gap, the Disney Store, Fairweather, Sport Chek, Claire's, Sephora, Old Navy, Foot Locker, Victo- ria's Secret, Club Monaco— there are now new arrivals mixed in. At Brentwood, a former middle-brow mall in Burnaby being redevel- oped into a massive mix of residential towers surrounding a plaza and outdoor street, there are outfits like Small Vic- tory, a café and bakery chain with only four locations total, and Bella Gelateria, another small, local chain of premium ice-cream makers, both present among larger chains H&M and Nike and one-offs like Hygge Design House. LEVELLING UP Richmond Centre, once a regular suburban mall, is starting to look like a new city in the making