Saturday September 3 2005
By Murray McNeill
A real estate development firm plans to add four to six new stores in the St. James Street area north of Polo Park Shopping Centre.
Calgary-based Hopewell Developments Inc. has acquired two properties in the area and plans to built three or four stand-alone retail stores on one of the sites, and one larger, stand-alone building with one of two retail tenants on the other.
The property that would include up to four separate stores is the former Winnipeg Dodge Chrysler Jeep dealership on Ellice Avenue, just east of St. James Street. That 0.8-hectare (two acre) parcel of land is already zoned for retail use, so all Hopewell needs to do is finalize who the tenants will be and what their needs are, and construction can begin.
The redevelopment of the other property -- a vacant, 0.8-hectare piece of land immediately south of the Costco Wholesale store on St. James Street-- is more complicated because it's zoned for M3 industrial use.
Hopewell has applied to the City of Winnipeg to have the designation changed to C2 commercial and a public hearing into that application is scheduled for Sept. 20 before the Assiniboia community committee. A Hopewell official said it could be early in the new year before a final decision is made.
Ron Holowatuk, Hopewell's vice-president of retail, said if everything goes according to plan, construction on both sites could get underway next spring and the new buildings could be ready for occupancy by late summer or early fall of next year. Hopewell is a relatively new player in the Winnipeg market, having been active here for only about three or four years. Holowatuk said company officials were pleased to acquire two properties in the St. James Street area because it has been a real hotbed of retail activity and development in recent years.
"We're very excited about the Winnipeg market," he said in an interview from Calgary. "We see a lot of good potential for those properties."
Holowatuk said discussions are already underway with a number of prospective tenants for each of the properties.
However, he refused to disclose who they are or even the kind of retailers they are, adding, "it's all very preliminary."
The building being planned for the St. James Street property will be about 27,500 square feet in size, Holowatuk said. The buildings on the Ellice Avenue property could vary greatly in size, depending on what the tenants require.
"They (the stores) could range from 1,500 square feet to as large as 26,000 square feet," he said. "It will be more clear when we actually have deals done." Randy Humble, a senior planner with the City of Winnipeg, said Hopewell's plans for the St. James Street property fit in with the kind of retail/commercial development that has been taking place along the street.
"There's been some fairly intense development in the last few years in that area."
However, while the city amended Plan Winnipeg a few years ago to allow for commercial/retail development along north St. James Street, Humble said the Costco store at 1315 St. James St. represents the north boundary for that kind of development.
The area north of that is designated for industrial use only, and Plan Winnipeg would have to be amended again before any retail development could take place beyond that point.
He said there are still some other pockets of land south of that northern boundary that could be redeveloped, but he didn't know how many properties there are or their exact locations.
murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca