By Mario Toneguzzi

Some big news is in store for one of Canada’s largest open-air urban shopping centres.

Deerfoot Meadows in Calgary will be welcoming the first Nordstrom Rack store in the market in the spring and Ethan Allen will also open a new store there around the same time.

Alan Rivait, director, leasing, retail, for Ivanhoé Cambridge which owns the shopping centre, says the opening of these two retailers will be the largest retail event at Deerfoot Meadows since the centre opened in 2005.

“It’s been a very, very stable project which is why what’s happening right now with Nordstrom and Ethan Allen is kind of big news,” says Rivait. “It is the most amount of space that we’ve rolled in sort of any given period. That’s why it’s such a big year for us".

“It just gives us an opportunity to rebuild and strengthen our mix.”

Deerfoot Meadows has just over 50 stores in about 321,000 square feet. If you add shadow anchors such as IKEA and Real Canadian Superstore, it’s about one million square feet. IKEA owns its own land but is part of the Deerfoot Meadows site. Superstore is a land lease arrangement. Other retailers nearby such as The Brick and Costco are separately owned.

The shopping centre, which features anchor tenants such as Banana Republic, Best Buy, EQ3, JYSK, Pier 1 Imports and Sport Chek, is located just off the busy Deerfoot Trail major roadway which connects with the Queen Elizabeth II Highway going north to Edmonton and south to the southern part of Alberta. More than 121,000 vehicles on a daily basis pass by the site.

Ivanhoe Cambridge has owned the property since 2008.

“It’s a regional site. Its trade area is the entire city of Calgary. It does not have a typical community power centre draw. It has true regional draw which is why the addition of Nordstrom Rack and Ethan Allen, which will both be the only stores in the market, will again serve to differentiate Deerfoot Meadows from all other power centres in the market,” says Rivait.

He says Nordstrom Rack will be going into previous Future Shop space. It will occupy about 31,000 square feet and will open on April 26, 2018.

The Ethan Allen store will open around June 2018 in about 8,600 square feet.

Rivait says only one unit remains available for lease at the shopping centre. It’s 4,500 square feet and Deerfoot Meadows has a conditional offer on that space.

Also opening in the spring is a flagship Jerusalem Shawarma location as well as a Sole to Soul Footwear store.

Rivait says Nordstrom Rack will be the first and likely only store in the Calgary market for the foreseeable future.

“It’s what they’re telling us,” he says. “According to Nordstrom folks, it will be a while before they look for a second store for the market.”

Nordstrom Rack will be located only a few kilometres away from the regular Nordstrom store in CF Chinook Centre.

“Nordstrom will be the first to tell you that the closer those two stores can be to one another the better . . . This was as close to Chinook as they could get that met their criteria,” says Rivait.

Ivanhoé Cambridge will also be opening a Nordstrom Rack in Vaughan Mills in Toronto on March 22, 2018.

Mario Toneguzzi, based in Calgary has 37 years of experience as a daily newspaper writer, columnist and editor. He worked for 35 years at the Calgary Herald covering sports, crime, politics, health, city and breaking news, and business. For 12 years as a business writer, his main beats were commercial and residential real estate, retail, small business and general economic news. He nows works on his own as a freelance writer and consultant in communications and media relations/training. Email: mdtoneguzzi@gmail.com.

For more of today's Canadian retail news: Canadian Retail News From Around The Web: December 12, 2017