Winnipeg | Retail

[buzzg]

Originally Posted by BAKGUY

Biggest embarrassment.
Most Winnipeggers should feel proud.
Every major Canadian city has a Bay store downtown and we lose a once flagship, once head office location?
Even Regina,Saskatoon.
So we are approaching a million in a few years?
Guess time to lure more Dollar stores to Portage?

Uh, no. It is disgraceful.
Who then in the next major retailer Downtown on Portage?
Hakim Optical? Dollarama? ? Dollar Tree? Timmie's?

It is bad. It's also important to note though that in both Saskatoon and Regina, their main major mall is downtown still. One could argue that that's great planning, but more likely it's a result of them being much smaller (and slow-growth) cities than Winnipeg, so they didn't have as noticeable/detrimental suburban shift. If Polo Park didn't happen or wasn't so big and successful, downtown Winnipeg would likely be a lot different today.

[esquire]

^ I've said it before, Winnipeg is in the anti-sweet spot for this kind of thing.

Regina and Saskatoon are small enough that they each have one major regional mall located downtown. There are suburban bigboxes and some smaller malls, but if you want to do real mall shopping you have no choice but to head downtown.

Bigger cities like Calgary and Vancouver have the population to support downtown retail and the suburbs.

Meanwhile, Winnipeg went whole hog with the suburban malls, but didn't have the population and level of downtown activity to sustain the existing downtown retail hub.

I know that it's generally said downtown retail is dead and we have to look at entertainment, housing, etc. to reinvigorate it. But for downtown residential, having at least some form of retail is essential. Even for office workers. With Staples, Coles and The Bay going, I am basically down to the likes of Ardene and The Source if I need to buy someone a gift at lunch time.

It's sad, but someone who works in the airport industrial park has probably 1000 times the retail options within a 5 minute drive than I do working downtown.

[cslusarc]

I think one thing that harmed The Bay Downtown is the mid-19th century "white flight" of upper middle class from the 1880s build neighbourhoods like Spence and West Broadway and those housing transitioning to boarding houses.

[CoryB]

Originally Posted by buzzg

Month-end numbers showed that with the complete disappearance of office workers (and no sign of their return anytime soon) there was no way to make this work anymore, they really did try. The store did what most here would probably find a shocking amount of sales in 2019.

1. I won't get into specific but you might be surprised on which downtown office workers are being told they need to report back and exactly how soon it is happening.

2. No, HBC did not "really try". The place looks really run down and tired like it hasn't really been touched with basic maintenance since the around the time Portage Place opened or even earlier. Things like carpet seams coming apart and being taped down, tiles being worn through and the reports that the escalators were no longer working.

3. Considering the company (in theory) owns the building is is spending close to zero on maintenance their overhead costs must be relatively low so I guess the net revenue could be shockingly high.

The other piece that really put me off is them just boarding over sections like the mezzanine leaving it looking really unappealing to shoppers.

Originally Posted by Kris22

I would love to see a residential conversion like the Victoria Bay someone posted a few days ago, with main floor retail.

Keep in mind the downtown Winnipeg Bay store is significantly older, and likely larger, than just about any other location in the country and easily the older in western Canada. The size of the floor plates is part of the big challenge is any renovation/reuse project. Others here could likely confirm but the cost per square foot for a project in the Winnipeg Bay building is significantly higher than just about anywhere else you could look at downtown.

To be the biggest missed opportunity was Hydro Place. Instead of taking out a full block of low/mid-rise buildings if they have gone with the plan to build on top of the Bay building we would be having a very different conversation today. That Hydro not only passed over the Bay site but took out a productive block of downtown retail that outside of a single tenant permanently left downtown is a much bigger disaster to retail than losing the Bay in my eyes.

Originally Posted by buzzg

A Downtown BIZ survey done a couple weeks ago pegs the downtown workforce at 20% of pre-Covid levels. That was before the code orange, and it’s likely not going up anytime soon. While I think lots of the unique or destination stores will be fine, ones with multiple locations might not be so lucky. This is a trend being seen across the country. Only thriving, suburban surviving, downtown dying.

Close, suburban retail is on the verge of death too. It was painfully visible on my visits to the Phoenix area more than five years ago. Like a lot of things Winnipeg is just behind the curve and it it starting to happen here too. Look at the Polo Park area where the former Home Outfitter and the old Staples location are sitting vacant. Also that part of Sears in Polo Park is being converted to a call center should scream volumes of what is happening. Thing about this -- for decades Hudson Bay was desperate to land an anchor space in Polo Park and none was available. Simons announced plans to make Winnipeg their first market outside of Quebec (before The Elms was uprooted). A few years back Polo did a massive space reallocation to make room for H&M. Without researching too deeply I could name over 5 mid sized or larger chains that would have jumped at a chance to land space in Polo Park ten years ago and easily could have filled a split of Sears space.

The shift from in-person retail to direct to consumer online is deeply underway. The announcement that Amazon is opening what will be mostly a grocery based fulfillment centre locally is another blazing sign that groceries too is rapidly shifting from in-person to online regardless of what the handful of people posting here say they prefer as they are in the minority. Ultimately cost of operations, which can be partially passed on to consumers is going to trump the preference of a mostly older customer demographic.

Originally Posted by cslusarc

I think one thing that harmed The Bay Downtown is the mid-19th century "white flight" of upper middle class from the 1880s build neighbourhoods like Spence and West Broadway and those housing transitioning to boarding houses.

Actually I think it was the late 70s/early 80s build outs of Kildonan Place and St Vital Centre. That in turn lead to the Polo Park expansion. The ill conceived Portage Place through gas onto the fire that was the end of retail in downtown Winnipeg. It's be burning out of control ever since and won't be stopped.

--

Originally Posted by Kris22

The staples was also super convenient and I thought maybe regular downtown residents + students might've been enough to keep it afloat but I suppose not. Bummer.

Re Portage Place and students, two blocks of downtown Winnipeg separate U of Winnipeg and Portage Place but mentally it might as well be the distance between Victoria, BC and St John's, NL. Before the U of W bus terminal reno they tried hard to meet the needs to students on campus but really lacked the space. When the book store moved to the bus terminal building about 10 years ago it definitely expanded capturing that audience. Add in that Portage Place never seemed to understand it even from the start, for example locating the food court as far away from the students as possible instead of flipping the mall east-west so the food court was very close to the students to draw them in. Staples is also somewhat a victim of the shift from pens, pencils, paper, and copying to laptop, tablets and submitting papers electronically. It is similar to how arcades and music retailers which once heavily populated Portage Ave also died off and disappeared. I am sure if you went far enough back Portage Ave likely had retailers that catered to horses, oxen and ox carts.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by CoryB

Actually I think it was the late 70s/early 80s build outs of Kildonan Place and St Vital Centre. That in turn lead to the Polo Park expansion. The ill conceived Portage Place through gas onto the fire that was the end of retail in downtown Winnipeg. It's be burning out of control ever since and won't be stopped.

In hindsight, The Bay never really needed more than one Winnipeg location. The half assed Kildonan Place and Unicity Fashion Square locations did not last long, and the St. Vital location, while still there, is extremely lacklustre. Polo Park, which is the de facto new downtown location, is really all that is necessary.

The downtown store's days were numbered when The Bay opened up at Polo Park in the wake of Eaton's closure.

[CoryB]

Originally Posted by esquire

In hindsight, The Bay never really needed more than one Winnipeg location. The half assed Kildonan Place and Unicity Fashion Square locations did not last long, and the St. Vital location, while still there, is extremely lacklustre. Polo Park, which is the de facto new downtown location, is really all that is necessary.

1. Kildonan Place operated for close to 20 years. At that point in time they had missed their opportunity at Polo Park and likely were blocked at Garden City. The shift away from downtown retail was clear so stores at suburban malls, not just in Winnipeg but across Canada and the USA was clearly the trend so they secured their spot. Up until close to the conversion they put in a pretty serious effort on that store although the poorly thought out garden centre didn't last long. I don't know as much about the Unicity store but am sure there was similar thinking behind it at the time.

2. Not sure the exact timings but the Unicity store effectively relocated to Polo Park. There were other issues with Unicity Fashion Square well beyond if the Bay should or should not have opened there. It's likely a case of Sears locating at Polo Park and passing at the opportunity to build a store at Unicity that sealed the fate of that whole property rather than if the Bay was a poorly thought out move.

3. The Bay at Polo Park has a really weird feel to it with a mix of Eaton's, Eatons, Sears and Bay design languages. It worked when it was Eatons (2.0) and was acceptable when Sears temporarily moved into the space while they renovated the store at the south end of the mall. That said the light retouching the Bay did when they took over shows their lack of care for the space or even retail in general anymore. It used to be each of the big department stores (Eaton's, Sears and Bay) had their own design languages and you could tell which store you were in from the look of the place.

4. Polo Park is definitely not the downtown Bay store. It doesn't have the higher end clothing section (The Room), the concession areas, the Top Shop, etc that are common in the flagship location in other cities. To be fair though neither does our downtown Bay store. It's like the brand left Winnipeg long before they announced to closure of their Portage Ave store.

[esquire]

^ Our "downtown" location pales in comparison to the ones in the largest Canadian cities, but it is still the only really full-line location left in Winnipeg even if it doesn't necessarily have every frill. On the other hand, the St. Vital store is so weak it reminds me of the Garden City Eaton's... i.e., why even bother.

Also, the Unicity store (which was similarly weak) closed in 2000. At that time, Sears Canada was in the process of totally overhauling the old Polo Park Eaton's store so at the time they couldn't have known the "aubergine Eaton's" was going to fail in a couple of years allowing HBC to step in. But that was the effect in the end. And like I said in my last post, once HBC moved into Polo Park, you knew the downtown store's days were numbered.

[CoryB]

^^ Keep in mind when Garden City Eaton's was originally planned the area had a larger Jewish and upper middle class demographic. CPT was still a dream too which made the area fairly isolated from what would become KP. St Vital was still in the planning stages too. And Polo Park was a shadow of what it is now, somewhat similar to what Grant Park is today. In the early days there was even talk of having a second floor on the Garden City mall.

Based on the information available at the time, Garden City would be an easy choice for Eaton's. It is easy to second guess that with hindsight but at the time it made a lot of sense. The one that do this day is more puzzling is why Eaton's and The Bay built two story stores at St Vital. That was definitely against trend at the time and the mall has never seriously talked about adding a second floor.

[esquire]

I can't remember where I read it, I think it was in Ross Gourluck's book about Eaton's, but I recall one of their managers said that the Eaton's at Garden City never turned a profit once. And yet it lasted for the better part of 30 years.

[cllew]

Could it be because Eaton's owned the land that St. Vital S/C was built on, and going up instead of going out allowed them to sell more land to the developer and put more more money in their pocket as even years ago they had cash flow issues.

As for the Bay maybe it was the cost of building up was less than buying land and being on one floor?

[LilZebra]

Side note:


I was in Seven Oaks Hosp. the better part of Sept. for a toe-foot issue. Next bed to me was one of the former "old skool" security staff of the downtown Eaton's store.

[CoryB]

Some interesting clips from the article linked below on the downtown Winnipeg Bay store:

- opened in 1926
- 675,000 sq ft
- utilized three massive coal-powered boilers in a power plant located 45 feet below street level to provide steam heat and hot water.
- A $4 million renovation between 1986 and 1987 saw updates to the main, second and third floors. (approximately timed to the building of Portage Place and likely the last significant reno)
- The Winnipeg store was the largest until HBC took over the downtown Toronto Simson's store in 1991 (aka likely largest purpose built Bay store)
- Smaller downtown stores existed in Regina and Victoria
- The CF Polo Park Hudson’s Bay store, which opened in the mall in 2003, is one of the company’s top performers.

Link

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by cllew

Could it be because Eaton's owned the land that St. Vital S/C was built on, and going up instead of going out allowed them to sell more land to the developer and put more more money in their pocket as even years ago they had cash flow issues.

As for the Bay maybe it was the cost of building up was less than buying land and being on one floor?

It just wouldn’t have seemed like a major department store if it had been on one floor. It would have been a Woolco.

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by CoryB

^^ Keep in mind when Garden City Eaton's was originally planned the area had a larger Jewish and upper middle class demographic. CPT was still a dream too which made the area fairly isolated from what would become KP. St Vital was still in the planning stages too. And Polo Park was a shadow of what it is now, somewhat similar to what Grant Park is today. In the early days there was even talk of having a second floor on the Garden City mall.

Based on the information available at the time, Garden City would be an easy choice for Eaton's. It is easy to second guess that with hindsight but at the time it made a lot of sense. The one that do this day is more puzzling is why Eaton's and The Bay built two story stores at St Vital. That was definitely against trend at the time and the mall has never seriously talked about adding a second floor.

It was always a bit odd that Garden City was the one mall location in Winnipeg (with a major anchor) other than Polo Park. Then the next one was Unicity, which wasn’t well located either. I remember the St. Vital mall being talked about in the mid-70s, but located further down St. Mary’s, around Vista Avenue. It made no sense until Bishop Grandin was built and then everything happened very quickly.

[BAKGUY]

I wonder if there would be a chance Winner's/ Marshalls/ Home Sense would find it profitable to open downtown?Perceived value, low prices, constant new stock arriving? Anywhere near Portage? They could take one floor of The bay and the rest can be a mixed use.
A former downtown Toronto Eatons store, College Park did that. Winner's anchors a few other stores, grocery store, food court food to go etc with residential above.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Andy6

It was always a bit odd that Garden City was the one mall location in Winnipeg (with a major anchor) other than Polo Park. Then the next one was Unicity, which wasn’t well located either. I remember the St. Vital mall being talked about in the mid-70s, but located further down St. Mary’s, around Vista Avenue. It made no sense until Bishop Grandin was built and then everything happened very quickly.

The strange thing about Unicity and Garden City is that they were built on pretty well the edge of town with little beyond them. The areas north and west of Garden City saw a bit of development from the 70s-90s, but didn't really start seeing much action until the last decade or so. The area surrounding Unicity has barely seen any development since it was built, except for some pockets in more distant Charleswood and Headingley… but very little in Assiniboia itself.

I guess the mall developers must have been expecting a lot more residential development in those precincts...

[ue]

Originally Posted by esquire

^ I've said it before, Winnipeg is in the anti-sweet spot for this kind of thing.

Regina and Saskatoon are small enough that they each have one major regional mall located downtown. There are suburban bigboxes and some smaller malls, but if you want to do real mall shopping you have no choice but to head downtown.

Bigger cities like Calgary and Vancouver have the population to support downtown retail and the suburbs.

Meanwhile, Winnipeg went whole hog with the suburban malls, but didn't have the population and level of downtown activity to sustain the existing downtown retail hub.

I know that it's generally said downtown retail is dead and we have to look at entertainment, housing, etc. to reinvigorate it. But for downtown residential, having at least some form of retail is essential. Even for office workers. With Staples, Coles and The Bay going, I am basically down to the likes of Ardene and The Source if I need to buy someone a gift at lunch time.

It's sad, but someone who works in the airport industrial park has probably 1000 times the retail options within a 5 minute drive than I do working downtown.

Except the Core in Calgary was built when the city was smaller than Winnipeg. Edmonton, which is similarly sized, has the same issues as Winnipeg's. It's historic downtown Bay store moved to the old Eaton Centre when they went under 20 years ago, and now the City Centre Bay store is also closing in early '21.

Perhaps its something in the air in the rugged, long winter Prairie cities? Both Edmonton and Winnipeg have made strides in the right direction. I'd argue Portage Ave has better retail than Edmonton's Jasper Ave (though with Staples and the Bay closing, this is lessened considerably).

Downtown Winnipeg really needs a supermarket. A pet store would be good too (though there is a Pet Valu just across the river in St B). Something not terribly fancy like a Winners/HomeSense would be a huge boon to those living right Downtown (and in some surrounding communities). Perhaps some 'destination' stores too, like if McNally Robinson relocated from Grant Park and Simons opened up their first Winnipeg location in the old Bay.

I agree that having key things for people living downtown as well as for people who are working or happen to be in the area is key, even if Portage Ave won't end up like Queen St West or St-Catherine Street. A few 'desination' stores would also help draw people in who might otherwise hit Polo Park, St Vital, or the Outlet Mall. Otherwise, focus on experience-based things like cafes, restaurants, bars, venues, galleries, etc.

[cllew]

Didn't the Bay look at anchoring a mall off of Grassie Blvd on the north side where there was a semi abandoned community club? I was in high school at the time but I heard that there is apparently larger than normal sewer and water in the area that was put in under the anticipation that they would go there.

Then the developer of Kildonan Place made a deal with the Bay to go there as the bookmark anchor with Sears, and the land off of Grassie was redeveloped as Harbor View South.

[plrh]

Originally Posted by cllew

Didn't the Bay look at anchoring a mall off of Grassie Blvd on the north side where there was a semi abandoned community club? I was in high school at the time but I heard that there is apparently larger than normal sewer and water in the area that was put in under the anticipation that they would go there.

Then the developer of Kildonan Place made a deal with the Bay to go there as the bookmark anchor with Sears, and the land off of Grassie was redeveloped as Harbor View South.

There is a 6' diameter trunk sewer that runs north on Lag and turns left on Chief Peguis then goes to the north end treatment plant. It was built in the mid seventies and is, like, 30' deep (which makes it more accessible to larger developments). The watermain is 10-14" diameter along Grassie. Your story seems believable. Are you referring to Grassie west of Lag?

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by esquire

The strange thing about Unicity and Garden City is that they were built on pretty well the edge of town with little beyond them. The areas north and west of Garden City saw a bit of development from the 70s-90s, but didn't really start seeing much action until the last decade or so. The area surrounding Unicity has barely seen any development since it was built, except for some pockets in more distant Charleswood and Headingley… but very little in Assiniboia itself.

I guess the mall developers must have been expecting a lot more residential development in those precincts...

I don't really know. It was always felt that Winnipeg was lacking malls, with just the one major one, so there was probably a feeling that whoever got in with a second or third one would hit a jackpot no matter where it was. Also, they were more of a destination than today - like many families, we would pack off to Polo Park on Saturday for a few hours of random wandering around. I remember we went to Unicity a couple of times to experience its novelty, even though we lived all the way across the city.