Rideau Centre Expansion | Completed

[Richard Eade]

Looks like the shuffling has begun: The OC Transpo service centre is moving at the end of October.

[J.OT13]

I wonder where they're final spot will be. Rideau Station concourse? The soon to be former Scotia Bank Building? Somewhere within the Rideau Centre near Rideau Street?

[gjhall]

Originally Posted by Richard Eade

Looks like the shuffling has begun: The OC Transpo service centre is moving at the end of October.

Learned today that this space is being taken over by Nordstrom.

[J.OT13]

So are they absorbing everything along that wall?

[gjhall]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

So are they absorbing everything along that wall?

I don't know, but that would definitely be a big change. That hallway basically provides services to commuters like at a regular bus/train station, so if there won't be that kind of foot traffic in the area, I could see how it wouldn't make sense to keep it in its current place. Would make more sense to relocate this kind of thing to as close as possible to the concourse of Rideau Station.

[Kitchissippi]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

I wonder where they're final spot will be. Rideau Station concourse? The soon to be former Scotia Bank Building? Somewhere within the Rideau Centre near Rideau Street?

Ideally. most of the LRT stations should have ticketing counters where one could get everything from single tickets to Presto cards, and be able to refill their e-purses and buy passes, making the Rideau Centre office obsolete.

[Shalaby]

Originally Posted by Kitchissippi

Ideally. most of the LRT stations should have ticketing counters where one could get everything from single tickets to Presto cards, and be able to refill their e-purses and buy passes, making the Rideau Centre office obsolete.

I would have assumed this as well.

[Urbanarchit]

Took this from the roof of the Rideau Centre. They're excavating the site, and the normal rooftop area and the Besserer entrance is closed.


Rideau Expansion by Shel DeFi on Flickr

[Harley613]

Originally Posted by Kitchissippi

Ideally. most of the LRT stations should have ticketing counters where one could get everything from single tickets to Presto cards, and be able to refill their e-purses and buy passes, making the Rideau Centre office obsolete.

I think we should do it Japanese style like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWzhHInOiaY

[Urbanarchit]

Originally Posted by Harley613

I think we should do it Japanese style like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWzhHInOiaY

Haha, how very wafū (和風) the way service is provided here.

But seriously, Japan does have a lot of really good urban and commercial ideas (as well as architectural), and we should look towards and even emulate them a bit more than how the West tends to look towards Europe.

Everyone was getting excited about The Eddy's puzzle parking system, but Japan has doing this with public bike parking.

[bartlebooth]

I heard of a few more details today regarding the Rideau Centre expansion project. Sorry if some of this has already been mentioned.

In addition to what we have already heard, there will be a Massimo Dutti opening as well as a massive Zara that will include a Zara Mens, Womens, Kids and Home. The Zara will be interesting because it sounds like it will be fairly large (approx 30000 sq ft - the new food court will be 35000 sq ft). There will be an entrance to the new food court located somewhere across from Arts Court which will hopefully help animate this area a little bit. Shoppers will be relocating to the space vacated by the current food court. Interior renovations to the existing building are supposed to be started this month (new tiles, railings, painting, etc...).

That is all I have heard, again some of this might already be old news.

[gjhall]

Originally Posted by bartlebooth

I heard of a few more details today regarding the Rideau Centre expansion project. Sorry if some of this has already been mentioned.

In addition to what we have already heard, there will be a Massimo Dutti opening as well as a Zara Home. The Zara Home will be interesting because it sounds like it will be fairly large (approx 30000 sq ft - the new food court will be 35000 sq ft). There will be an entrance to the new food court located somewhere across from Arts Court which will hopefully help animate this area a little bit. Shoppers will be relocating to the space vacated by the current food court. Interior renovations to the existing building are supposed to be started this month (new tiles, railings, painting, etc...).

That is all I have heard, again some of this might already be old news.

That's great, I love Massimo Dutti, it's Zara's answer to Banana Republic.

[JackBauer24]

I didn't know Banana Republic was a question.

Originally Posted by gjhall

That's great, I love Massimo Dutti, it's Zara's answer to Banana Republic.

[McC]

nice one.

[citydwlr]

A couple of recent updates:

Rideau Centre facade improvements get nod from NCC
(via Ottawa Community News - Nov 28, 2013)

Also, regarding Massimo Dutti, it's now confirmed on the Rideau Centre site under the News section (arriving in 2016).

And, lastly, according to a November 14th article in the Citizen, City Council has approved Overnight construction work at the Rideau Centre. Apparently, this will start December 1st and continue until February 28th, 2015.

[movebyleap]

http://www.retail-insider.com/2013/12/simons-postpones-rideau-centre-store.html

11 December 2013

SIMONS POSTPONES RIDEAU CENTRE STORE OPENING BY A YEAR

Rendering of Simons/Rideau Centre, including a restored facade of the former Ogilvy department store. Rendering: Rideau Centre/Cadillac Fairview

The opening date of La Maison Simons' store in Ottawa's Rideau Centre has been delayed. It is now scheduled to open in August 2016, where it had originally been scheduled to open in the spring of 2015. It will therefore be the second Simons store to open in the Ottawa area, about one year after the recently announced Simons at Les Promenades Gatineau which will open in the spring of 2015.

The Rideau Centre Simons store will be about 105,000 square feet and will feature a reconstructed facade of the historic Ogilvy building formerly occupying the store's site. Rideau Centre's mall expansion will include 230,000 square feet of new retail space over four levels, as well as a modernization of the mall's common areas. A 35,000 square foot upscale food court with 16 eating establishments seating 850 (complete with ceramic dishes, glassware and metal cutlery) will be available to shoppers as well as a new three-level underground parking garage. Joining Rideau Centre will be a 157,000 square foot Nordstrom store, which is still scheduled to open in the spring of 2015.


Rendering of the interior of Rideau Centre. Rendering: Rideau Centre/Cadillac Fairview

We were alerted to the delay in the Rideau Centre Simons' opening after a press release was issued claiming that Mississauga's Square One Shopping Centre would be the first Ontario location for Simons. That press release appears to have been correct.

[teej1984]

Disappointing news.

[J.OT13]

We already knew that though. The Rideau Centre was originally supposed to start construction in Spring right after the Ogilvy (RIP) was torn down. For some reason, they dragged the process to a Fall construction start (likely modifications on design and size of the project).

[J.OT13]

OBJ article wrongfully stating that the Rideau is the largest mall in the city. Article doesn't say much, but at least we have the list of architects, builders and designers (although we already knew about Padolsky, BBB and PCL);

Deals of the Year: Rideau Centre’s long-awaited expansion becomes reality

As the general manager of the capital’s largest shopping mall, Cindy VanBuskirk knows getting the best deal in retail often requires patience and persistence.

By David Sali

Those qualities paid off in a huge way this year for the woman in charge of the Rideau Centre, where a $360-million expansion project got underway in earnest.

It’s an ambitious plan that was seemingly just around the corner for the better part of a decade, and when mall owner Cadillac Fairview’s board of directors finally gave its official approval for the deal this September – after the demolition of the adjacent Ogilvy’s department store had already begun – no one was happier than Ms. VanBuskirk.

“I was actually at a national operations conference in Vancouver with my ops manager and my security manager when word came through,” she told OBJ recently. “The buzz was that it had been approved and that we were good to go. There was definitely some euphoria.”

And for good reason. The board’s approval meant years of planning and negotiating, interrupted by more stops and starts than rush-hour traffic, were finally about to pay off.

Retail analyst Barry Nabatian said the Ottawa region is starved for upscale retailers, and the pending arrival to the mall of Nordstrom and Simons, as well as other high-end tenants such as J. Crew and Victoria’s Secret, marks a major milestone in the city’s retail history.

“In terms of magnitude of impact, it’s as big as when Walmart came to Canada,” he said. “Although it’s not going to impact as many people because not everybody can or would want to shop at Nordstrom, but in terms of keeping a very large portion of the shopping dollars that were leaving Ottawa, it has that kind of impact.”

It’s been no secret in the industry that the Rideau Centre, which celebrated its 30th anniversary this year, has long been in desperate need of more space. Previous owner Viking Rideau announced in the fall of 2005 that it would break ground on an expansion project early the following spring, only to see those plans fall through.

Then, the Congress Centre next door finally announced it was being rebuilt as the rebranded Ottawa Convention Centre, another long-awaited project that put the mall’s expansion on hold.

“There was no way that we could have had two projects of that magnitude going on simultaneously on a constrained site,” said Ms. VanBuskirk. “We sort of took a back seat.”

The turning point, she said, came when current owner Cadillac Fairview, the real estate arm of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, became sole proprietor of the Rideau Centre in December 2010.

“That set the stage for where we are now,” Ms. VanBuskirk said. “They’re really recognized leaders in the industry in terms of renovating, expanding and redeveloping their retail assets.”

With the new convention centre finished, the Rideau Centre’s time had come.

In September 2012, Cadillac Fairview announced that high-end U.S. fashion retailer Nordstrom was taking over the top two levels of the vacated Sears space, with a 157,000-square-foot store slated to open in March 2015. The following month, about 25 planners gathered at the Westin hotel, the first meeting of the group that would put together the expansion plan and pitch it to Cadillac Fairview’s board of directors.

Eleven months later, the dream was finally a reality. Cadillac Fairview officially announced at the end of September that the mall would add 230,000 square feet of retail space, featuring Quebec-based clothing retailer Simons and its 100,000-square-foot store as an anchor tenant. The project is slated to be completed by the fall of 2016.

“The process to get to that point had been extremely labour-intensive on the part of the project team,” Ms. VanBuskirk said. “We were all really excited to get the green light to go ahead. But it was really nice to come back to the property and to be able to let our retailers know, to let our staff know.

“Rideau Centre is very much a community centre. We’re a big part of what’s happening downtown. So everybody’s been tremendously excited and supportive and really looking forward to seeing what we’re going to deliver at the end of the project.”

In the end, she said, it was worth the wait.

“I never doubted that it would happen,” said Ms. VanBuskirk, who called the announcement the highlight of her 22-year career with the mall. “I firmly believe that things happen for a reason and they happen when they’re supposed to happen. It was obviously not meant to be … in 2005 and 2006. Frankly, what we’re building today is definitely superior to what we were proposing then.”

The project has faced a host of other challenges, including satisfying city and National Capital Commission design requirements, not to mention the logistical hurdles in doing major construction work on a building that is visited by 60,000 people each day.

“The approval … is really just the starting point. Now the real heavy lifting starts,” Ms. VanBuskirk said. “There aren’t many opportunities in a career in this industry to see a project of this magnitude and this complexity, to see it unfold and to be an active participant in it. I’m thoroughly enjoying every minute of it. It’s a lot of work, but it’s so worth it.”

Sidebar: Who's involved

The renovation project team includes:

Interior designer: GH+A Design

Project architect: Groupe Archifin Inc.

Construction manager: C.A.L. Construction

The expansion project team includes:

Interior designer: GH+A Design

Design architect: BBB Architects

Project architect: B+H Architects

Heritage architect: Barry Padolsky Associates Inc., Architects

Construction manager: PCL

http://www.obj.ca/Other/Special-Reports/...long-awaited-expansion-becomes-reality/1

[eemy]

They may have been going off Wikipedia's list of largest malls in Canada, which I suspect includes the square footage of The Bay in it's figure for the Rideau Centre. Even with the expansion, I believe the Rideau Centre will still be slightly smaller than the St. Laurent Centre.