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Originally Posted by buzzg
I honestly feel like Polo Park might be kind of happy with this... will be interesting to see what they do with the second level. Complete teardown and rebuild? Raise the roof?
Cory.... thoughts?
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Sorry, was offline most of the weekend when the news broke about Sears Polo Park.
The 11 locations announced late Friday for closing are essentially leases being surrendered to land lords, likely to prevent protracted claims further into the bankruptcy proceedings. It is also likely not surprising these are mostly the more valuable properties left in the portfolio.
In terms of the fate of Polo Park, the location, at its core, is original to Polo Park so would put it at about 1959 and there would certainly be huge improvements in terms of building design that could be accomplished with a demo and rebuild. If that happens it is really anyone's guess how it will ultimately play out.
If repurposed the existing units between roughly the Apple store and Sports Check but on the opposite side could be expanded in depth into the Sears space reducing some of the main floor. Also the southeast corner of the main floor Sears space does have a potential to be opened to the mall as a smaller unit with some of the main floor space. The big challenge will be the second floor with limited access to the mall. I was thinking that perhaps a split two floor store using the existing main floor Sears mall entrance through to the escalators to the south side of the upper floor combination could be made to work for the right tenant and would essentially give them one "floor" of around 100,000 sq ft which would line up similar to the size of Simons stores in other cities.
Another possibility is Seafood City which recently opened their first 50,000 sq ft store in Canada. If say the took approximately 50,000 sq ft on the south side of the main floor with the existing door to the parking lot and decent amount of parking outside the door.
In terms of larger tenants, Sports Check recently announced a further rollout of their "Hero" store format which is about 50% larger (60,000 sq ft) and Winnipeg was missing from the list. A relocation of Sports Check and repurposing of the Sports Check space could be another possibility.
In terms of junior anchors Zara and Unilqo are both active in Canada and could land at Polo. Both Off 5th and Nordstorms Rack are possibilities but both feel like longer shots.
I also, somewhat sadly, think the current rebuild of the transit loop at Polo makes an expansion up to the curb just a dream now.
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The big unanswered question is when will Sears at Polo close? I did not see anything announced and as the timing would mean nothing new is moving in through the holiday season I suspect they will close early into 2018 if the whole Sears brand doesn't go dark earlier.
Speaking of Sears Canada as a whole, included in Friday's announcement were two somewhat telling details -- the bid from former Sears Canada head has still not been approved, and an extension is being requested for their current bankruptcy proceedings. On the lack of approval for the bid, it could still come together but also seems to point to it being dead. On the extension to bankruptcy, Sears was originally thought to emerge from their current proceedings and continue as a going concern, extending those proceedings means the restructuring efforts are not going as originally planned may lead instead to a complete bankruptcy and market exit for the chain.
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The other big Canadian retail news over the weekend was that Metro (eastern Canada grocery chain) and Jean Coutu (eastern Canada drug store chain) agreed to a merger. It is mostly of note as it is the final round of the consolidation in those spaces that was expected. The next piece to maybe fall is who will partner with Alimentation Couche-Tard (aka Macs) to gain an angle on that side of the market. As Alimentation Couche-Tard is an absolutely huge international company, second in the space only to 7-11, there is no chance of a buyout but that said there are certain synergies from an alliance, ie feature Presidents Choice snack foods at Macs.
The Weston family is definitely making moves, essentially freezing Holts, divesting their gas stations and ending their PC Financial partnership with CIBC. The question is why are they moving so many cards around.
One final tidbit to ponder -- the Weston family (aka Superstore locally) has formally announced a partnership with InstaCart to bring grocery home delivery to their stores. This leaves Sobeys/Safeway without a order online for pickup/delivery anywhere in sight.
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