By Craig Patterson

The Willowbrook Shopping Centre in the Vancouver suburb of Langley will be adding three new junior anchors to the mall property. Those include a Winners store this spring, Nordstrom Rack in the fall, and in the fall of 2021 a T&T Supermarket, known for its vast assortment of Asian food goods, will open as part of an expansion.

“Our mandate as we continue to reinvest and improve Willowbrook Shopping Centre is to create a very unique, experiential and best-in-class shopping destination with an offering that’s compelling to our customers,” says Chrystal Burns, Senior Vice President, Retail for QuadReal Property Group. “As our Langley community continues to grow and become more multi-cultural in their tastes and expectations, we believe this will be delicious and welcome news to our clientele.”

Landlord QuadReal has been adding new retailers to the centre as part of an effort to establish Willowbrook as a retail node for the region, which has seen its population grow with residents who may not otherwise be able to afford real estate closer to Vancouver itself. The new retail tenants also speak to the confidence QuadReal has in the shopping centre as stores begin to reopen following a retail shutdown because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Nordstrom Rack will span about 30,000 square feet and will feature a full range of fashion and footwear as well as other categories such as accessories and home goods. The Winners store, which will be even larger, will include a similar product assortment. Both will be located at the south end of the Willowbrook property. JLL Canada represents parent companies Nordstrom and TJX Group and negotiated the two deals.

Both stores will be located in a reconfigured space that was formerly occupied by Sears. The Sears Canada chain shut its remaining stores in early 2018.

A 39,040-square-foot T&T grocery store will also open at the north end of Willowbrook in the fall of 2021. The Asian grocery concept, founded in Vancouver, will be the first for Langley and will feature an in-house bakery, Asian deli, sushi, and Chinese BBQ departments. The Willowbrook location will also offer Asian-style health services as well as herbal and naturopathic products plus an onsite insurance agency, pharmacy, financial services, among other services.

Willowbrook Centre has seen significant changes over the past couple of years as QuadReal continues to enhance the retail mix. The shopping centre is home to about 130 retailers. That includes a 131,000-square-foot Hudson’s Bay store as well as junior anchor stores including a 44,000-square-foot Toys R Us store, a 42,000-square-foot Sport Chek store, and a 20,200-square-foot H&M store. All three anchors were recently relocated to a reconfigured space that was once home to a Target store before the US chain exited Canada in early 2015.

A further expansion of Willobrook is planned that will include an outdoor village component. When completed, at least 200 stores will be included in the mix including large-scale restaurants. The centre currently spans about 650,000 square feet and has more than six million visitors annually.

Now located in Toronto, Craig is a retail analyst and consultant at the Retail Council of Canada. He's also the Director of Applied Research at the University of Alberta School of Retailing in Edmonton. He has studied the Canadian retail landscape for the past 25 years and he holds Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Laws Degrees. He is also President & CEO of Vancouver-based Retail Insider Media Ltd. Email Craig: craig@retail-insider.com

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