Pacific Centre's owner expects the downtown Vancouver mall's 44,000-square-foot retail expansion to be full when both it and a 230,000-square-foot Nordstrom department store opens in spring 2015.
This despite no leases having yet been finalized.
Nordstrom Inc. (NYSE:JWN) will occupy three floors of the former Sears building – each slightly more than 73,000 square feet. Those floors are the street level and floors 2 and 3. Four above floors will house office tenants and a basement level is being transformed into an expanded Pacific Centre.
"We expect there to be between 10 and 14 new retailers on the concourse level of the expanded Pacific Centre," Cadillac Fairview senior vice-president and portfolio manager for Western Canada Tom Knoepfel told Business in Vancouver February 4.
"For many of those retailers, this will be their first store in Vancouver."
Pacific Centre currently has 984,835 square feet of retail space.
The expansion would not only have 44,000 square feet of retail space but also almost 30,000 square feet of concourse common space.
An escalator is expected to rise out of the concourse to the corner of Granville and Robson streets, Knoepfel said.
Some retail observers have speculated that a future underground link could be built between Cadillac Fairview's Pacific Centre and Ivanhoe Cambridge's Fairmont Hotel Vancouver site by tunnelling under the front lawn of the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Ivanhoe Cambridge has been remaking the retail component at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver and is expected to soon welcome fashion retailers such as Christian Dior.
Knoepfel said no such link has been contemplated.
