Winnipeg Retail

[Biff]

Originally Posted by Jammon

As an aside to retail- I had a thought: what I find amazing with the changing face of retail and online shopping is that travel agents are still viable business options. My travel agent is busier than ever. I just would have assumed with online bookings and people choosing to go online, it would have virtually eliminated the need for agents, but they seem to be weathering the market changes.

I know what I find frustrating with online travel booking is that unless you know where you want to go and specifically like to stay at a certain hotel or chain the internet can be kind of overwhelming. Travel agents have the abilities to find certain deals and can give you actual feedback for different destinations that become very tedious reading through all of the reviews - most of which are negative.

[steveosnyder]

Originally Posted by Biff

I know what I find frustrating with online travel booking is that unless you know where you want to go and specifically like to stay at a certain hotel or chain the internet can be kind of overwhelming. Travel agents have the abilities to find certain deals and can give you actual feedback for different destinations that become very tedious reading through all of the reviews - most of which are negative.

The other thing that I find travel agents good for (and what a lot of them have pivoted to) is group bookings. It's tough for each individual party in something like a family reunion and/or wedding to coordinate all the things involved.

[CoryB]

The Garden City Future Shop was always a secondary market store and as such was intentionally designed to be smaller and focus more on less expensive, "consumable" type of items. They still had access to sell the full line and might even have something in stock, if not they could arrange pickup or delivery with one of the other stores.

Also, for those of you commenting on how small the Lelia location was does anyone else remember the even smaller location on McPhillips near Northgate mall? Or even further, how one time one of the giant letters that formed the sign out front fell off the building and damaged a parked car?

[steveosnyder]

Originally Posted by CoryB

The Garden City Future Shop was always a secondary market store and as such was intentionally designed to be smaller and focus more on less expensive, "consumable" type of items. They still had access to sell the full line and might even have something in stock, if not they could arrange pickup or delivery with one of the other stores.

Also, for those of you commenting on how small the Lelia location was does anyone else remember the even smaller location on McPhillips near Northgate mall? Or even further, how one time one of the giant letters that formed the sign out front fell off the building and damaged a parked car?

My brother worked at that location... It's a paint store now if I remember right, I don't go around that area often any more.

[esquire]

^ Oh yeah, totally forgot about the old McPhillips Future Shop. It was where Tool Town is now.

[steveosnyder]

Originally Posted by esquire

^ Oh yeah, totally forgot about the old McPhillips Future Shop. It was where Tool Town is now.

I think we both might be wrong... Looking at Streetview it's a salvation army. Who knew!

https://maps.google.ca/maps?ll=49.94...44.86,,0,13.52

[esquire]

Originally Posted by steveosnyder

I think we both might be wrong... Looking at Streetview it's a salvation army. Who knew!

https://maps.google.ca/maps?ll=49.94...44.86,,0,13.52

Go figure. Maybe I need to leave the Downtown-Osborne bubble a little more often

[Jammon]

Originally Posted by esquire

Go figure. Maybe I need to leave the Downtown-Osborne bubble a little more often

LOL. Are you able to meet all of your shopping needs at Portage Place??

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Jammon

LOL. Are you able to meet all of your shopping needs at Portage Place??

Someone told me that Winnipeg extends down past Kingston Row, but I don't believe them

[Phil's neighbour]

CBRE For Sale signs are up on Precinct F on McPhillips Street, site of the rumoured north end Costco. About 130 acres or so.
Looks like Simplicity was spot on with this analysis.

Originally Posted by Simplicity

Yeah, unless the north is somehow immune to the same slowdown in the new housing market, I don't foresee either of these developments moving any time soon. I know Genstar is planning to have their subdivision applications to the city for Precinct E in early February (or that was the plan), but with inventories so high, I doubt we'll see much actual building.

If anybody's interested in December's CMHC housing report, I'll leave a link at the bottom. In what makes up most of the market in both of these new precincts (single-detached), complete and unabsorbed up 16% on the five-year average and under-construction is up 9.3% over last year. Nice to see starts in a huge slow down (December alone was down 35% over last year and we're at 9.7% less for the year), but the resale market is doing more harm to these new developments than anything else.

It'll be interesting to see how the increased resale inventories continue to beat up on new construction. In speaking with one of the top brokers in the city last week he told me the focus is now entirely on buyers for the agents. That's the first time in almost ten years.

Check out the report here...

[Simplicity]

Originally Posted by Phil's neighbour

CBRE For Sale signs are up on Precinct F on McPhillips Street, site of the rumoured north end Costco. About 130 acres or so.
Looks like Simplicity was spot on with this analysis.

I know CBRE has a listing for just over 20 acres across the street between Murray and Balgona that's outside of the precinct plan. I'm surprised to hear about this, though. Does the sign indicate 130 acres within the precinct?

[Phil's neighbour]

I didn't jot down the numbers when I drove by this morning. Something like 90 acres residential and 30 commercial. Several signs on the Precinct F property. No listing on the CBRE site yet.

Originally Posted by Simplicity

I know CBRE has a listing for just over 20 acres across the street between Murray and Balgona that's outside of the precinct plan. I'm surprised to hear about this, though. Does the sign indicate 130 acres within the precinct?

[Simplicity]

Originally Posted by Phil's neighbour

I didn't jot down the numbers when I drove by this morning. Something like 90 acres residential and 30 commercial. Several signs on the Precinct F property. No listing on the CBRE site yet.

Good eye. Thanks for the update. I don't get out that way much these days.

[bomberjet]

Direct link to the Precint F open house boards here.

It'll be interesting to see what happens in the single family home market. Transcona west is humming right along. Not sure on the sales numbers at this point. But there are three separate developments U?C at this point. Smaller scale developments, a few hundred homes each. But the larger Genstar development, Devonshire Park, is still years away. We'll see if that one dies. Also a lot of others raring to go.

[plrh]

Originally Posted by bomberjet

Direct link to the Precint F open house boards here.

It'll be interesting to see what happens in the single family home market. Transcona west is humming right along. Not sure on the sales numbers at this point. But there are three separate developments U?C at this point. Smaller scale developments, a few hundred homes each. But the larger Genstar development, Devonshire Park, is still years away. We'll see if that one dies. Also a lot of others raring to go.

I think the biggest problem with single family housing in winnipeg is mhrc acting as a developer in bridgwater. They have almost 1000 vacant lots right now and another phase of 399 just tendered. Part of that 1000 is a phase of 300 lots from two years ago with 0 houses under construction so far. I think they just want to finish bridgwater and get out of property development.

Also with the qualico development in charleswood under way and castlebury in the nw, we might have a housing slow down soon.

[bomberjet]

There's a ton of developments on the horizon, filling all vacant land within the CoW boundaries inside the perimeter (There's a bunch of land around St. Norbet and Headingley I believe, that is outside Perimeter).

Anyways, I'll try to list them off.

Sage Creek completion
Fraipont (or whatever its called now. just west Lag, north of 101)
Transcona West Area (which is about 5-6 separate developments)
Transcona north
All the precints north of chief Peguis West Extensions
Amber Trails completion
CentrePort residential
Waverley West Area (again a large number of phases as you've mentioned)
Ridgewood

Probably a bunch more I'm missing, these are off the top of my head.

[Danny D Oh]

Originally Posted by CoryB

There are also reports that while Best Buy Canada has not carried major appliances in store the withdrawal of the Future Shop brand will see that changed fairly quickly.

I really hope Best Buy takes a good hard look at the reasons behind the demise of Future Shop. The amount of housewares and home appliances Future Shop carried could not have helped. I always remember being in that store over the last 20 years and that section of the store being devoid of people. As much as they tried to enhance and expand their housewares offerings, that never changed. They aren't going to compete with Wal-Mart, Superstore and Canadian Tire on basic housewares. They might hit a niche with ranges, vacuums etc.

I like Best Buy. Don't want them to be next.

[vjose32]

Yes I remember the old Future Shop on McPhillips quite well. It's now a Thrift Store.

I also remember when Northgate used to be a pretty vibrant place with Zellers, Kmart, BiWay, and a kids party play zone thing. It was good aside from the vacant food court, lol.

Then Kmart got forced out, Zellers expanded, Cinema City replaced the food court and BiWay and it all went downhill after that.

Now they have pretty much all of Zellers and Kmart sitting vacant.

I also remember when we had a Woolco at Garden City Square and they had a small mall there, that was until Walmart came in and sealed off the entrance to the mall and effectively killed everything in it except Scotiabank.

[vjose32]

Originally Posted by plrh

I think the biggest problem with single family housing in winnipeg is mhrc acting as a developer in bridgwater. They have almost 1000 vacant lots right now and another phase of 399 just tendered. Part of that 1000 is a phase of 300 lots from two years ago with 0 houses under construction so far. I think they just want to finish bridgwater and get out of property development.

Also with the qualico development in charleswood under way and castlebury in the nw, we might have a housing slow down soon.

What stores are they expecting to go there? lol, pretty ambitious plan to me.

[tedtim]

I didn't mind going to Future Shop and giving a salesperson the commission IF they knew what they were doing.
I would go into the store, having done all the research on the product, and if the salesperson could answer my questions, I'd buy the product.
Sadly, most of the time they just would read the little card by the display, so I'd just buy the product at Best Buy.