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Old 10-01-2018, 10:44 AM   #41
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Some personal services could fit in this, such as health services (doctor, dentists, chiropractors, massage therapists), lawyers, accountants, tattoo artists, registry, etc.
Just based on the video, it didn't look like the mall was set up for these sorts of businesses - not enough space in the units.
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Old 10-01-2018, 10:51 AM   #42
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Could turn it into a co-sharing workspace, with private offices? Put some facilities in to sweeten the deal (lounges, pool tables, climbing wall, etc.), use the space to get people in there working and being a community. Free parking, lots of personal space, etc. Good opportunity to reduce the commute for thousands of Airdrie and north Calgary folks.
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Old 10-01-2018, 11:00 AM   #43
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I was surprised when the project actually broke ground a couple years ago. I think there were a lot of people questioning the viability of the mall even when the concept was floated around, so it's not like they can say this comes as any surprise.

Which is too bad, because I was hoping they'd be able to turn it into a muticultural mall, with lots of nice food options and quirky shops. By the looks of it, that's going to be a long way down the road if it even happens in the first place.
The same was said for Cross Iron when it was first proposed, and IIRC when it first opened it was pretty dead during the week and really only had decent traffic (in shopping terms) during the weekend. It's obviously since grown into a success. So maybe this will just take time too but on the other hand Cross Iron was full (vacancy wise) when it opened which is certainly not the case here. Will be interesting to see how this plays out. Hopefully the speculators who bought most of the units cut their losses and dump them for a more realistic and reasonable price and allow merchants to pick them up and actually be able to run a viable business.
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Old 10-01-2018, 11:08 AM   #44
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The same was said for Cross Iron when it was first proposed, and IIRC when it first opened it was pretty dead during the week and really only had decent traffic (in shopping terms) during the weekend. It's obviously since grown into a success. So maybe this will just take time too but on the other hand Cross Iron was full (vacancy wise) when it opened which is certainly not the case here. Will be interesting to see how this plays out. Hopefully the speculators who bought most of the units cut their losses and dump them for a more realistic and reasonable price and allow merchants to pick them up and actually be able to run a viable business.
I had more confidence in Cross Iron vs. this project. I remember going to Pacific Centre in Toronto, and that barely worked in Toronto with a much larger Chinese population. I just didn't think there was a big enough Chinese community in Calgary to sustain something of this size. The only way I saw it being successful was if it turned into a full multicultural mall that included Chinese, East Indian, Korean, European, etc. groups of Calgary. I think that'd be a neat concept, to be honest, and hope that's what this morphs into eventually. A multicultural mall that has a lot of mom and pop stores, and not just a Asian mall offering cheap electronics that you can order off Amazon and Alibaba.
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Old 10-01-2018, 11:12 AM   #45
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Pro tip for Cross Iron Mills — don’t take the QEII, exit on NB Metis off of Stoney. Then you can come in behind the mall on traffic-feee roads.
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Old 10-01-2018, 11:27 AM   #46
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I find business stories fascinating. It will be interesting to see what will happen here.

.
There's sooooo many people in business that shouldn't be, it's amazing. There's way too many people that are just out enjoying their daily life, see someone doing something and think "I can't see why I couldn't do that...and I'd be free from the shackles of working for someone!".

Not realizing that they now wear huge financial debt and no way to beat out the competition shackles. Every business idea seems reasonable when looked at by the laymen. It's why there's an endless supply of people willing to open bars and restaurants despite almost nothing but bankruptcy waiting at the end of every story.
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Old 10-01-2018, 11:28 AM   #47
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Just based on the video, it didn't look like the mall was set up for these sorts of businesses - not enough space in the units.
Yeah, these are glorified kiosks.
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Old 10-01-2018, 11:31 AM   #48
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Yeah, these are glorified kiosks.
Wasn’t that the concept? That was always my understanding of what this would be.
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Old 10-01-2018, 11:37 AM   #49
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Wasn’t that the concept? That was always my understanding of what this would be.
Yep, sorry wasn't meaning to present it as something new, was just countering the guy who suggested they could be turned into medical offices and whatnot. These were designed as little kiosk style shops and nothing more.
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Old 10-01-2018, 11:44 AM   #50
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I think it's basically supposed to be like Silk Alley in Beijing or that kind of thing? I'm not sure on the size of these shops, but that was my thought.
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Old 10-01-2018, 11:46 AM   #51
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Could turn it into a co-sharing workspace, with private offices? Put some facilities in to sweeten the deal (lounges, pool tables, climbing wall, etc.), use the space to get people in there working and being a community. Free parking, lots of personal space, etc. Good opportunity to reduce the commute for thousands of Airdrie and north Calgary folks.
Not a bad idea but converting vacant space to "co-working" space is very trendy right now and I think our market is hitting critical mass. Nearly every major Landlord (Oxford, Strategic, Brookfield, Aspen etc.) have converted vacant floors into co-working spaces. A lot of Oil & Gas firms will lease out their excess space on an office by office basis. Initially it was a great idea to earn income on space that was going to sit vacant for a long time anyway but now there are so many opening up that the demand is starting to diminish.

Traditional business centre business like Regus have dropped their prices in response and it will likely be a race to the bottom from there.
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Old 10-01-2018, 12:18 PM   #52
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Pro tip for Cross Iron Mills — don’t take the QEII, exit on NB Metis off of Stoney. Then you can come in behind the mall on traffic-feee roads.
Shh... they won't be traffic free for long, if you tell people!
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Old 10-01-2018, 12:21 PM   #53
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A bunch of rich ####s who tried to get their tentacles into this mall by exploiting small business owners with onerous fees are taking a bath on their investments?

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Old 10-01-2018, 12:26 PM   #54
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A bunch of rich ####s who tried to get their tentacles into this mall by exploiting small business owners with onerous fees are taking a bath on their investments?

I kind of doubt it, but could be wrong.

This seems like the sort of investment a middle class or under guy would make, thinking it's a rich-guy investment and thus a step toward becoming rich. I can't picture many savvy investors buying these and then dealing with the hassle of renting it to a guy that sells imported phone cases for $5 each.
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Old 10-01-2018, 12:30 PM   #55
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Man if this turned into an electronics shopping mall like the ones in this video...it would be heaven haha

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Old 10-01-2018, 01:21 PM   #56
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Just based on the video, it didn't look like the mall was set up for these sorts of businesses - not enough space in the units.
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Yeah, these are glorified kiosks.
Fair enough. I was just trying to think of something that could go in with very few incentives.

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This seems like the sort of investment a middle class or under guy would make, thinking it's a rich-guy investment and thus a step toward becoming rich. I can't picture many savvy investors buying these and then dealing with the hassle of renting it to a guy that sells imported phone cases for $5 each.
I think Calgary is ripe for people to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. There are plenty of people that have saved up more money than the average Canadian and think they got there because they are smarter than they are lucky.

I would love to know more about who bought in to this, and why thought it would be a good idea.

Maybe it will take longer than I think, but I am still convinced that someone will buy low and find a way to make money on this. And it probably won't be the people buying now, but people buying in a couple years from the people that are trying to scoop up the "deals" today.
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Old 10-01-2018, 01:28 PM   #57
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Not a bad idea but converting vacant space to "co-working" space is very trendy right now and I think our market is hitting critical mass. Nearly every major Landlord (Oxford, Strategic, Brookfield, Aspen etc.) have converted vacant floors into co-working spaces. A lot of Oil & Gas firms will lease out their excess space on an office by office basis. Initially it was a great idea to earn income on space that was going to sit vacant for a long time anyway but now there are so many opening up that the demand is starting to diminish.

Traditional business centre business like Regus have dropped their prices in response and it will likely be a race to the bottom from there.
Yeah but the Horizon Mall location wouldn't cater to the downtown crowd; it also could offer amenities the other spaces just don't have, as well as free parking which is basically impossible downtown during business hours. Plus if people knew they didn't have to commute in is reason enough for some people to consider it.

You could even do half of the building as co-working spaces, and the other half as a gym or something.

Of course I'm just an armchair developer with unlimited amounts of funds and I own the whole structure, so my approach probably isn't realistic.
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Old 10-01-2018, 03:19 PM   #58
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This thread inspired me to take a walk through... Clearly a big empty mall is no good. But in terms of design and layout, i like it a lot, and would love to have this place open and functional. It seems like eventually they will get there, but certainly has the potential to turn into Eau Claire, which never matched its design potential.

The building has 4 large anchor tenant spaces, if they could fill those quickly, they have a good chance in my opinion. The sign indicated one was "coming soon", but there was no sign of construction, and the lady at the leasing booth seemed shocked when i told her the sign said they had a tenant moving in "soon".
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Old 10-01-2018, 04:11 PM   #59
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I'm surprised there wasn't a mandate to owners that their spaces had to be filled by a certain date.

Regular malls have restrictions on when stores are allowed to be closed and how long they have to renovate. Though regular malls also take a percentage of profits.

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Old 10-01-2018, 04:40 PM   #60
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The only saving grace about a few large speculators buying a tonne of units will be that that might facilitate consolidation into larger spaces to potentially attract some kind of anchor tenant.

If you had a true "condo" approach with individual owner/operators (as it was billed as), you'd never be able to get a large block on board for redevelopment easily.

Terrible location and execution. Not only is the mall missing a critical mass of open store, I'd argue the city is also missing that critical mass of Chinese immigrants (for which this is a very attractive and familiar format) that other centres do have.
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