By Mario Toneguzzi

The Heartland Town Centre in Mississauga, one of Canada’s largest and busiest power centres, is about to get even busier with many retail initiatives on the horizon.

Matthew Kaplan, leasing manager with Orlando Corporation which owns the retail property, said retail giant Nordstrom Rack will be opening its third Greater Toronto Area location in the beginning of September in 36,000 square feet of space.

This comes on the heels of the widely-popular Jollibee food offering which set up shop in Seafood City at Heartland - its third Canadian location and second GTA location - in mid July.

“We’re essentially a super regional centre . . . We’re the major population centre with industrial and office to the east of us and residential to the west and we’re accessible by the 401 (highway) which is just north of the centre,” said Kaplan.

“So we’re highly accessible and we’re a massive 2.2 million-square-foot centre with everything from apparel, grocery, restaurants, just everything customers are looking for in one place.”

Kaplan described Heartland as a “hybrid” centre with a mixture of full-price and outlet stores.

Dan Hyde, senior manager of retail for the Orlando Corporation, said Seafood City is an American grocery store chain catering to the Filipino community - and that has brought a strong presence to the power centre from that community.

“That area was a redevelopment of a former Rona store. We tore down a portion of the Rona store. Rebuilt what remained, added to it and put a 50,000-square-foot Seafood City. That was their first venture out of the country. It’s been highly successful,” said Hyde. “They’re very happy with their sales and Jollibee is just going to drive their numbers up even higher. But it’s given a focal point to an ethnic group that we really hadn’t touched on specifically in the development.”

Heartland offers more than 190 stores and services with over two million square feet of retail space. The centre was built in multiple phases but the first stores started opening about 26 years ago.

Recently the New York-based chain Halal Guys, a Middle Eastern restaurant, opened at the power centre.

*The Halal Guys Grand Opening was AUgust 3, 2018*

Other recent openings were a Costco gas bar and Congee Queen (a Chinese restaurant).

Kaplan said there are a few leasing opportunities existing at Heartland right now for retailers who might want to take advantage of the centre’s growing popularity.

One is an 11,000-square-foot space next door to the Nordstrom Rack. Also Home Outfitters recently vacated about 34,000 square feet. There are a few smaller units between 4000 and 10,000-square-feet which available which in the centre.

Hyde said the centre’s vacancy rate is running at about one per cent or a little bit less.

*Heartland Centre Map (see below for close-ups).*

North West Section

North East Section

South West Section

North East Section

“One of the challenges of finding space for the tenants who do want in right now is with the right configuration and size and of course the right location with the neighbours they’re looking for,” added Hyde.

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He said Heartland is about 250 acres of a 1,200-acre planned industrial office development that the company owns.

“It has a large neighbourhood of business community on the east side of it and of course a large residential neighbourhood on the west and north side of it,” added Hyde. “And we are surrounded by the 400 series highways . . . So we have accessibility from a long distance. People travel here from London, Kitchener, Guelph to shop here because of the scale of it but the fact we’re easy to get to.”

“We think our sales probably make us one of the higher performing large-format retailers in Canada if not North America.”

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

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