From sinkhole to Simons: Behind the pit, Rideau Centre's three-year transformation nearly...

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Ottawans marvelled this week as Rideau Street crumbled before our eyes, giving way to a yawning, van-eating maw in the heart of downtown. ​

Despite the #Rideausinkhole selfies circulating, this was not the international photo op local business owners had been anticipating.​

For some on the street, it is just the latest setback during a prolonged period of construction and renovation. ​

But there is the promise of better times ahead. ​

For, sitting there, as silent backdrop to the crater, was the still-concealed facade of a much different kind of omen for Rideau Street.​

In August, the iconic Rideau Centre mall will unveil the piece de resistance to a three-year, $360-million renovation that has transformed the iconic shopping centre.​

Its overhaul represents the shifting consumer patterns of a city and region, and offers business owners both in and around the mall what they hope is a new opportunity to thrive.​

This week’s upheaval notwithstanding, as the Citizen’s Vito Pilieci reports below, it could be in the months ahead that we truly learn whether Rideau Street, its mall and its environs, will sink or swim … or perhaps thrive.​

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When Quebec fashion retailer Simons throws open its doors at the CF Rideau Centre – exactly two months from today — it’s bound to be a bustling debut.

In the first few hours alone, there will be hundreds of shoppers, coming one gentle wave after the next, a milling crowd of the eager, the curious and the nonchalant.

The grand opening, however, will mark more than the arrival of Montreal-chic in downtown Ottawa.

It will signify the completion of a 36-month, $360-million renovation at the once-staid shopping centre.

At the same time, it will offer a glimpse of the future of a new Rideau Street, a roadway that has seen billions of dollars in investment over the past decade fuel hopes of a retail revival in the heart of the city.

Sink hole jokes aside, this is a very big deal for the downtown corridor.

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The Rideau Centre is aiming, as all malls are, for more luxury brands and upscale tenants these days.


The aged cinema that once spanned the Rideau Centre’s fourth floor has been gone for more than three years now.

More recently, the popular Marché restaurant vanished from its long-claimed space beneath the escalators on the mall’s first floor. Cinnabon is but a sweet memory; the Sports Experts store near Rideau Street is closing its doors.

The souped-up food court was moved about a year ago to a larger space filled with higher-end food offerings. In its old spot is a sleek, relocated Shoppers Drug Mart.

It all sounds so trivial, but these things are part of the grand plan to change the space, to attract fresh new retailers and, according to the experts, to draw new, higher-end clientele to the shopping centre.

Make no mistake, malls are not dead. In fact, here in Canada where winter forces us indoors for long periods of time, they are becoming more popular than ever before. According to Industry Canada, in 2004 Canadian malls matched American retail malls in the amount of dollars spent by consumers per square foot of available space.

Those shopping centres have outperformed their American counterparts ever since.

Oliver Tighe of Colliers International, a commercial real estate firm, says the disappearance of some of the more mainstream brands from the corridors of the Rideau Centre is no coincidence. The massive renovations and, in many ways, an upscaling of the site were needed to land the luxury brands coveted by mall operators.

“There are these high-end retailers that landlords want to attract. They have requirements regarding the quality of the mall that they want to be in,” he explains.

“Brands like Tiffany & Co., I don’t know that they would have come to the old Rideau Centre. They’ve done a good job of making (it) nicer, and, all of a sudden, all of these new retailers are coming in.”

To accommodate the interest in higher-end brands, there has been a lot of change in the once all-too-familiar building.

“It’s evolved,” says Cindy VanBuskirk, general manager of the CF Rideau Centre. “Retail evolves constantly, and if you’re not keeping up, your customer will find new places to shop. Whether that’s online or at the mall down the street.”

The sinkhole has been a difficult disruption, but Van Buskirk brushes off long-term consequences.

“Business operations are almost fully restored at CF Rideau Centre,” she said in a statement. “When situations like this happen, perspective is important. There was no loss of life. With the city’s ongoing restoration efforts and community support, Rideau Street and all affected businesses, including CF Rideau Centre, will move forward.”

Related

• What does the Rideau redevelopment mean for ByWard Market?
• Rideau Street work has been a nightmare for some businesses
• The new Rideau Centre, by the numbers
• Rideau Street's evolution

Work underway this past week to repair a massive sinkhole on Rideau.

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Rideau Centre isn’t alone in its desire to better appeal to consumers while also looking to lure upper-scale brands willing to pay premium rents.

In recent years, the mall’s major competitors, the St. Laurent Shopping Centre and the Bayshore Shopping Centre, have also undergone massive renovation and expansion. New shopping venues such as the Ottawa Train Yards and the Tanger Outlets have popped up on the scene.

And it seems customers willing to pay premium prices for luxury items are becoming more common in Ottawa.

“There has been significant change in the demographic and economic condition of Ottawa residents,” said Barry Nabatian, a market researcher with Shore Tanner Associates.

“We now have seven out of 10 households consisting of only one or two people. Given that many of them are retired citizens with good pensions, they have lots of money. These are the people who used to go to New York, Paris, London or Toronto to spend big money on luxury goods.”

Ottawa is a town that has a lot of well-off residents. According to Statistics Canada the average household income in Ottawa sits around $97,000. According to Nabatian, 4.5 out of 10 households are making more than $100,000.

Nabatian said that as Ottawa’s population has aged, many have chosen to forego long distance travel and shopping trips for retail therapy closer to home. The market has responded and a number of shops have been coming to Ottawa or opening new shops here, most notably Nordstrom, Harry Rosen and Whole Foods.

Opening lineup and pre launch party beauty bash for the grand opening of Nordstrom in Ottawa, last year.


Nabatian said that, at one point, $1 billion a year was being spent by city residents on luxury goods outside of Ottawa because of a lack of higher-end stores in the capital. Simply put, people couldn’t find the high-priced luxury items they were looking for within the city limits. That is changing.

The amount people on spending on luxury items outside of Ottawa has been cut back to $800 million annually, as more people chose to shop at home.

“Almost $200 million has been recaptured,” he said. “In other words, the loss of leakage is now in the order of $800 million, which is still high. But, it’s going down.”

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Aware of the changes coming to Ottawa’s downtown, CF Rideau Centre’s new owners, Cadillac Fairview Corp. Ltd., decided to get ahead of the curve and immediately began working on plans to revitalize the city’s most recognizable shopping centre shortly after they acquired the property in 2010 for an undisclosed sum from Viking Rideau Corp.

Cadillac Fairview is one of North America’s largest owners, operators and developers of commercial real estate. The company’s portfolio of properties , which also includes the CF Toronto Eaton Centre, is worth more than $29 billion.

The CF Rideau Centre’s soon-to-be opened addition will include stores such as H&M, Vans and Simons. The expansion, which has been built on land once occupied by the old Ogilvy Building at the corner of Rideau Street and Nicholas Street, has added an additional 230,000 square feet of retail space, more parking and a whole new bank of escalators to help ease foot traffic.

Exterior of Rideau Centre, which has been undergoing a three-year, $36-million redevelopment.


The action isn’t all inside the building, though. Rideau Street and the surrounding area, is hopping.

What started with the demolition of the Ottawa Congress Centre in 2008, which was ultimately replaced by the $170-million Shaw Centre, will eventually end with the opening of the downtown Ottawa light rail Confederation Line LRT, which includes Rideau Station right in front of the Rideau Centre mall, in 2018.

Over that decade, a large swath of Ottawa’s downtown, certainly the marquee area that is most targeted by tourists, will be transformed, from the National Arts Centre, to the new Arts Court, and more.

It’s as though the city had been watching as the things on its “to-do” list piled up and suddenly decided it needed to get to all of this done — right now.

For Montreal retailer Simons, which had been eyeing Ottawa for decades, the amount of rejuvenation happening in the city’s core, coupled with the Rideau Centre’s expansion, pushed it to finally pull the trigger on opening a store in Ottawa.

Simons is building a store in the CF Rideau Centre in Ottawa. CEO Peter Simons was on hand to give a media tour. Photo by Jean Levac


“We’ve wanted to be here for a long time, and I’m talking 20 years. But, really we felt that there needed to be a strategy for the downtown core. I’m very excited about the downtown core of Ottawa right now,” said Peter Simons, chief executive officer of Simons while touring the soon to open Ottawa location.

Under construction: Simons is going to be another anchor tenant for the Rideau Centre. Photo by Jean Levac


Staring out of a set of windows, which will act a backdrop to a cafe that will located inside the Simon’s store, Simons said the buzz about everything that is happening in the nation’s capital is starting to grow in volume and is attracting the attention of consumers in other cities.

“You hear about it, and we’ve been hearing about it (the LRT) for years, but it’s totally different when you’re staring at it and there it is,” he said, gazing across the road at the location of a new LRT station that is inching toward completion on Rideau Street. “It’s a very exciting time in this city.”

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