Thanks
icetea93, I'll have to start paying attention to the Champlain Place page on Facebook. I must admit that I usually ignore Facebook.
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It is good to see these higher end stores coming to Champlain Place. As has been previously pointed out though, Moncton is a pretty small city for many of these chains (in Canada). I presume that they are justifying this move based on the regional catchment area of the mall (as well as traffic counts and sales per square foot).
The upscaling of Champlain may provide an opportunity elsewhere in the city to accomodate displaced retailers, or mid-range retailers that the mall can not (will not) provide space for.
The revived Mapleton Power Centre will likely see some benefit from this. It appears that the empty strip backing on the Wheeler offramp is seeing some work. With stores like Cleves and Golf Town soon ready to open and PetSmart announced, Mapleton will soon take off. Things will really begin to happen once the (anticipated) Best Buy and Bed, Bath & Beyond are finally announced.
Downtown will likely also experience a revival, especially if developers take note of this opportunity to service the slightly-less-than-top-drawer retail market. Of course, the fact that the location of the downtown events centre has not yet been announced is conversely having the effect of delaying downtown development in the short term. No one likes uncertainty. Everyone wants to make sure that their property investments are properly located in order to maximize return. It's time for the city to get off the pot and finally fess up the location of the events centre. Without this information, developers will only keep on sitting on their hands rather than investing in the core. Without this information, downtown retail will suffer.
Come on City Hall, tell us what we need to know in order to remove uncertainty from the downtown. Right now we have development paralysis. This needs to end -
now!