Quote:
Originally Posted by GibblyJibbly
Awfully slow couple weeks eh
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Well, not Saskatoon, but the Gateway Mall in downtown Prince Albert has a new owner,
Alrifai Real Estate, which appears to be a small-ish Toronto-based boutique investor who purchased the property at auction. Their CEO, Louai Alrifai, states his firm's plans are to work actively to revitalize the mall. Which is great, because someone else might have just stripped it for parts and moved on.
From the
LinkedIn announcement:
Quote:
We just bought a mall.
400,000 square feet. 14.8 acres. 1,150 parking stalls. The largest enclosed shopping centre in northern Saskatchewan.
Gateway Mall, Prince Albert. Property #23. Our first in Western Canada.
Everyone is running from enclosed malls. We ran at one.
Retail isn't dead. Lazy ownership is. This centre is the retail heart of a trade area serving all of northern Saskatchewan, anchored by The Brick, Dollarama, Ardene, Urban Planet, Foot Locker and The Source. It deserves an owner who shows up.
So we showed up. My team is on site right now. Meeting every tenant. Walking every unit. Building the leasing plan to bring this centre back to full strength.
18 years. 23 properties. Two provinces. One owner. No partners, no funds, no committees. When we decide, we move.
Retailers and operators looking at the Saskatchewan market: my door is open.
Prince Albert, we're just getting started.
Lou Alrifai
CEO, Alrifai Real Estate
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If you don't already know, that mall is currently... not in great shape. But it looks like it has retained a reasonably strong core of tenants, has an extremely central location, and could be a destination for people from all over the north, especially in the winter. Well, there are indoor shopping malls in North Battleford and Melfort, but Gateway Mall in PA is by far the largest and most centrally located. PA's only other indoor mall has basically converted to a small power centre or large strip mall with only a vestigial indoor concourse, so the opportunity is open to make this a destination anchor for downtown PA like Midtown Plaza is for Saskatoon.
This is Alrifai's first property outside of Toronto, and they seem quite bullish on the future of Northern Saskatchewan. This is their first indoor mall, too, it appears, which is just what's needed, IMO, as you can tell they will pay a lot of attention to Gateway Mall (and Prince Albert) as a corporate expansion on multiple fronts, and value it as a beachhead into an underserved regional market. Whatever management corporation or REIT that formerly owned the property let it deteriorate to the point of being threadbare and... not the kind of place you'd want to spend a lot of time in. So it's not competitive at all with the massive Cornerstone power centre down 15th St. But by the same token, Cornerstone's existence demonstrates a relatively strong retail demand in the region. So, an activist investor with new perspectives is perhaps Gateway Mall's only hope to tap into that market and bring it out of its current situation.
And I think there is every reason to be optimistic about the future of Prince Albert. It has a beautiful location on the North Sask, with perhaps Saskatchewan's best municipal park in Little Red River Park on the north side, and with grade on the south side of the valley running clear across the city... The "West Hill" and "East Hill" are somewhere between Moose Jaw's and Vernon BC's in terms of scale and incline.
Prince Albert has its own history that predates Saskatoon, it's own institutions, and is outstanding among Canadian cities in terms of its urban composition with a majority or near-majority Indigenous population. It has so much potential to be an institutional capital for Indigenous peoples all across the North, more so than it already does. It already has a municipal airport with regular scheduled passenger service (YPA -- convenient), which could allow the city to better stand in its own right if WestJet ever decides to test/hopefully keep a Calgary flight like it has done with places like Lloydminster, Medicine Hat, Brandon, Cranbrook, Penticton, etc... Also I just want to point out that Glass Field Airport is an awesome name for an airport.
There's also a strong case for future economic growth in Northern Saskatchewan and North East Sask not related to extraction alone and hauling freight south to whatever mainline, but increased logistics and secondary service sectors as the Churchill corridor sees continued investment. The port just saw its first grain shipment since 2020 and will soon be shipping out plenty of Saskatchewan resources. Melfort, Hudson Bay (town), and The Pas will also be huge beneficiaries of this if a few key rail improvements can be made. All seem destined to become interchange points on a new continental system converging on Churchill MB. And a lot of that freight (slash passengers?) will stop or change lines at Saskatoon...
And a stronger Prince Albert is a good thing for Saskatoon, as far as I'm concerned. If Prince Albert receives more outside investment is able to build some greater economic momentum to sustain itself (which potential is definitely there), it may lead to some institutional relief in Saskatoon, which in turn might give overtaxed local organizations more room to breathe. While at the same time improving what is the only place with more than 20,000 people within a 2.5 hour drive of Saskatoon.
There's already plenty to do for a day trip to PA. Wouldn't it be great if this province had another vibrant, vital and dense historic urban core that people want to visit? Click around on Google Maps, Prince Albert has plenty of prewar building stock downtown, and Central Ave is a pretty intact streetscape, with a more human-scale ROW (for prairie standards). The street also has proper termini on either end, with the river and the McIntosh Building to the south, and the viaduct and KB Courthouse to the north, which stands in the middle of the ROW right at the slope of the hill, foregrounded by the two-block viaduct crossing a narrow section of the (Omnitrax) Carlton Trail Railway just west of its yards, right at its hinge between Warman/mainline/Saskatoon/Prince Rupert, points north, and, erstwhile but maybe yet, Birch Hills, Melfort, Hudson Bay (town, bay, and railway) and Churchill; and, right next to where PA's old CN station would have been. It is quite elegant, actually, and makes for a good descending view across the valley. If Moose Jaw can be a destination... why not Prince Albert?
And the Gateway Mall is right there in the middle between the two termini. Based on the comments on the LinkedIn post, I'd say Alrafai has the full support of Prince Albertans, and here's hoping his team pulls it off. You can see he specializes in "diamonds in the rough", so I think he's the right person for the job, now that he's here. And if he finds success in Prince Albert, maybe Saskatoon could get another activist real estate investor with beneficial outside perspective well suited to this market.
Anyhoo, not exactly Saskatoon Construction, but hopefully I'll be forgiven for this unrequested pronouncement on our Highway 11 neighbour to the north, as there doesn't seem to be much else going on during these dog days of summer. Plus, PA doesn't have its own thread, and I'm not sure how many posters here also keep up with the (mostly Manitoba focused) non-CMA thread.
Well, maybe one could post the massive growth happening at the Meadows with dense apartment, townhouse and other multi-family/densely packed single family sprouting up around Zimmerman Rd and what's becoming an increasingly well-served area of the city... looks like a successful emulation of Stonebridge with more and more destination spots of its own. And an extremely strong anchor in Costco. But I just wrote a whole post already lol
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