Halifax Retail

[icetea93]

Originally Posted by someone123

According to ANS, there will be an Apple store opening soon in the Halifax Shopping Centre.

Nice!

[haligonia]

Aha! I had a feeling this would come true! Hopefully that this was published by AllNS means that it is more than just a rumor now.

[kph06]

I spent far too much time shopping in that mall or my own liking in the weeks leading up to Christmas, so I regularly checked on work on this end of the mall in an attempt to regain my sanity. I noticed it was Ellis Don doing the work, which made me think it was a high profile retailer like Apple, Ellis Don wouldn't go after the run-of-the-mill retail fit-ups, it would have to be a big job or a national retailer.

[CorbeauNoir]

Originally Posted by someone123

According to ANS, there will be an Apple store opening soon in the Halifax Shopping Centre.

Eh, good on Halifax but I'll be steering clear of it, I get a creepy pseudo-cultish vibe from those stores. Their sales reps are like the Scientologists of computers

[q12]

Originally Posted by someone123

According to ANS, there will be an Apple store opening soon in the Halifax Shopping Centre.

Awesome news.

[gm_scott]

still skeptical...

[DigitalNinja]

That's exciting. Is this the only Sonystyle location?

[halifaxboyns]

The retail front in HRM seems to be getting stronger and stronger. That is good news.

[kph06]

Originally Posted by DigitalNinja

That's exciting. Is this the only Sonystyle location?

From the way I read the article it will fill in the 2nd level of the atrium when you walk in the door between Sears and Club Monaco, the escalators will be pushed into the mall more.

[icetea93]

Also on ANS, there is an article that states that Mic Mac Mall is under a new manager and is currently in disscusions with some "major retailers". They mentioned Forever 21 in the article, and Mic Mac recently had a poll on Facebook asking fans what stores they would like to see in the mall. The choices were: Aritzia, Guess, Forever 21, Victoria's Secret, and Zara. Looks like a big year is shaping up on the retail front

[cormiermax]

It's all apart of Halifax becoming a major national centre Fantastic news.

[someone123]

Well, I think a big part of the story is that the Apple Stores have been working their way down retail markets for a while now. I believe the first store opened in the Bay Area (was it downtown SF?) about 10 years ago, then there was a delay of a few years before Toronto. The GTA now has several stores.

Halifax seems to be a secondary or tertiary retail market in Canada, clearly behind cities like Toronto, Montreal, or Vancouver, but not too far behind somewhere like Calgary or Ottawa because of the regional status.

Halifax has also moved forward somewhat in absolute terms. In the 70s or so it was a relatively poor city of 250,000 and soon it will be a relatively wealthy city of 500,000 -- that's a big difference, and not all cities have seen that progression.

I think Winnipeg has an IKEA now so that could conceivably happen in Halifax sometime soon as well.

[icetea93]

Article regarding Apple:

If this latest rumour proves true, it appears an Apple Store could be arriving at the Halifax Shopping Centre in Nova Scotia. Two separate eastern news sources have received independent tips about this upcoming store (The Coast, AllNovaScotia), and now ifoAppleStore provides details on the possible location of the Apple Store within the mall:


According to the allNovaScotia.com Web site (sub.), the future store will appear near the Sears store, in an area that’s been under construction since mid-November. Workers are reportedly relocating an escalator and building a mezzanine level where the Apple store will eventually appear. The mall was renovated in 2007, and recently has been adding several upscale retailers to serve the province’s one million residents.



A total of 22 Apple Stores are located within five provinces only: BC (4), Alberta (4), Manitoba (1), Ontario (9), and Quebec (4). Could Nova Scotia could join this exclusive list?

Previous rumours noting upcoming 2012 Apple Store openings include locations at Masonville Place Mall in London, and store on Robson St. in the heart of downtown Vancouver.

http://www.iphoneincanada.ca/iphone-...-in-the-works/

[icetea93]

Ivivva Athletica will open on Spring Garden Road this year. It is Lululemon's young girls' line.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/busines...coming-halifax

[gm_scott]

More shopping options for SGR. Gotta like that! I'm also really excited to see what appears in the Trillium space

[goosnarrggh]

Originally Posted by kph06

I spent far too much time shopping in that mall or my own liking in the weeks leading up to Christmas, so I regularly checked on work on this end of the mall in an attempt to regain my sanity. I noticed it was Ellis Don doing the work, which made me think it was a high profile retailer like Apple, Ellis Don wouldn't go after the run-of-the-mill retail fit-ups, it would have to be a big job or a national retailer.

It seemed obvious to me, by the end of December, that this job was fairly substantial - something along the scale of adding a mezzanine level somewhere in the vicinity of the entrance.

Trying to reconcile the earlier "remove an elevator near Sears" twitter rumour, I'd actually envisioned the possibility that the expansion might be pushing out into the little indentation in the exterior of the mall, between the main mall foyer and the Sears exterior wall (where all the heavy equipment has been parked) -- and in the process, perhaps eliminating Sears's existing customer elevator just inside that wall next to their portrait studio.

It actually makes much more sense that the work would remain inside the existing building envelope, and that twitter rumour was simply mistaking the word "elevator" for "escalator". That would have been a really easy mistake to make, especially if you consider the possibility that the tweet might have originated on a mobile phone.

[goosnarrggh]

Originally Posted by someone123

I think Winnipeg has an IKEA now so that could conceivably happen in Halifax sometime soon as well.

One of the earliest Canadian IKEA locations was originally in Dartmouth, opened in 1975. It shut down in 1988, ostensibly due to Nova Scotia's then-active Sunday shopping laws. (Apparently that was the time when Nova Scotia really started an enforcement push on stores who tried to go against that law.)

It seems to have been a regular pastime for locals to go stroll around the IKEA store on a Sunday afternoon. When the government started actively enforcing the law, IKEA's management thought that the government dealt with the issue unfairly, so they left and vowed to never come back. (But the overall small size of our market and the difficulty to turn a profit probably played a fairly important role in the decision too.)

[halifaxboyns]

IKEA would come back if the market conditions improve and I suspect they are probably keeping an eye on things.

Now that the Sunday shopping issue is taken care of, I suspect they might wait to see how population growth occurs and then once we're around the 500,000 mark they may start checking for sites.

[terrynorthend]

Originally Posted by goosnarrggh

One of the earliest Canadian IKEA locations was originally in Dartmouth, opened in 1975. It shut down in 1988, ostensibly due to Nova Scotia's then-active Sunday shopping laws. (Apparently that was the time when Nova Scotia really started an enforcement push on stores who tried to go against that law.)

It seems to have been a regular pastime for locals to go stroll around the IKEA store on a Sunday afternoon. When the government started actively enforcing the law, IKEA's management thought that the government dealt with the issue unfairly, so they left and vowed to never come back. (But the overall small size of our market and the difficulty to turn a profit probably played a fairly important role in the decision too.)

Yes, this is true. Unfortunately in the interim (1988-the reinstatement of Sunday shopping in NS), IKEA changed its retail concept to that of a "mega-store" that is designed for retail catchements of 1M+.

Indeed as HRM grows towards the 500K mark, and as the surrounds approach 1M, they may reconsider Halifax.

[icetea93]

Rumor: Bluenotes is closing in Halifax Shopping Centre and a Victoria's Secret store will take its place. Hoping to be open by July 2012.

Source: Bluenotes employee