Store openings later this year are expected to revitalize Robson Street and pull the street’s hip shopping core east toward Granville Street.
Old Navy first added heft to the corner of Robson and Granville streets in late 2013, when it opened a 12,000-square-foot Vancouver flagship store.
Nordstrom Inc.’s (Nasdaq:JWN) slated 230,000-square-foot department store is set to open at that corner in September, a few months after about a dozen retailers open in an extended Pacific Centre mall that will stretch underneath the future Nordstrom.
“We’ll announce in the coming weeks who we’ve signed,” said Tom Knoepfel, landlord Cadillac Fairview’s portfolio manager for Western Canada. “We have the majority of those retailers under lease.”
Other changes at Vancouver’s largest downtown shopping mall include Meinhardt Fine Foods, opening this spring in Pacific Centre at the base of the Canaccord Tower at the corner of Granville and Dunsmuir streets.
It will be the second location for the Jim Pattison Group-owned grocer and will replace what used to be the International Culinary School, Knoepfel said.
Retail space in the area is snapped up quickly – sometimes even before current tenants leave.
Sport Chek will leave its longtime 35,000-square-foot Pacific Centre location this summer, and Knoepfel told Business in Vancouver that the space “may already be leased.”
The end of June will also be when Chapters vacates its 52,000-square-foot site at the corner of Robson and Howe streets to make way for a sportswear store. Canadian Tire’s (TSX:CTC.a) FGL Sports Ltd. division, which owns Sport Chek, will renovate and occupy the Chapters site, said Clint Elenko, Canadian Tire’s vice-president of real estate.
Farther up the street, past the Ugg boot store that opened in December, is the flagship store that Lululemon Athletica Inc. opened in August, on the southeast corner of Burrard and Robson streets.
There’s empty space on the intersection’s southwest corner at the 5,000-square-foot former Bebe site, which has split into three since the women’s fashion store left last year.
French beauty products retailer L’Occitane has taken about half of the former Bebe space while two “national brands” will take possession of the rest of the space within the next month, said CBRE senior vice-president Mario Negris.
“Just because there’s a new anchor at Robson and Granville, it doesn’t mean, ‘Oh my God, the desirability of Robson and Thurlow or Robson and Bute is over,’” Negris said. “Most major retail streets worldwide are a lot more than a few blocks. So, for Robson’s main shopping area to go from Bute Street to now Granville Street is a natural progression.”
That said, there are some vacancies in the western end of Robson’s main shopping area.
Robson Street Holdings’ site on the southwest corner of Robson and Thurlow streets has been partly empty since mid-2012, when Starbucks Corp. (Nasdaq:SBUX) and Triple O’s left. Representatives of those companies told media their rationale for leaving was partly because they could not secure a long-term lease without a demolition clause, which allows the landlord to evict a tenant in order to demolish the building. Newly vacant space includes the 4,300-square-foot former Mexx location between Thurlow and Bute streets, which closed in advance of the European retailer closing all of its Canadian locations.
“Prime street-level retail space on Robson can be close to $200 per square foot,” Negris said.
That makes the strip the priciest in Canada after Toronto’s Bloor Street.•
