Coming soon to a shopping district near you: the Nordstrom effect.
For Granville Street, it’s expected to significantly change the thoroughfare’s daytime demographics thanks to an influx of affluent shoppers and office workers.
More than 2,500 people are set to work either in the Nordstrom department store, which is set to open September 18, or in office space above.
The evolution to a wealthier customer base is exciting nearby property owners and retailers while raising the profile of long-vacant space in the 800-block of Granville Street, south of Robson Street.
The 39,500-square-foot former Empire Granville 7 cinemas site at 855 Granville Street, for example, is the most glaring vacancy.
It had been rumoured as a potential site for an Indigo Books & Music store, given that the Toronto-based company closed a nearby 52,000-square-foot Chapters bookstore at the corner of Howe and Robson streets in early June.
Indigo, instead, signed a short-term lease on a 5,000-square-foot site at 816 Granville Street , replacing an Aldo shoe store within a month of that store’s closing.
“We are also still looking for a large-format store in downtown Vancouver,” Indigo spokeswoman Kate Gregory told Business in Vancouver. She would not rule out a potential move in the future to the former Empire Granville 7 site.
Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association (DVBIA) CEO Charles Gauthier believes it’s a testament to the attractiveness of the street that the Aldo vacancy was filled so fast.
Three separate buildings make up the Granville 7 site and are “arguably easiest to be leased as separate buildings,” according to Alastair Fergusson, Cushman & Wakefield associate vice-president of retail services.
Those buildings, which have 18,000, 12,000 and 9,500 square feet, have been empty since late 2012 and are owned by Ontario-based Terrma Capital. No one there was available to discuss the potential fate of those buildings.
Other empty space in the block includes a site at 820 Granville Street that housed a Quicksilver store until about a year ago.
Landlord Kerry Bonnis, who owns Bonnis Properties with his brother, Dino Bonnis, told Business in Vancouver that Quicksilver continues to pay rent and rebuffed his attempt to get it to relinquish the space.
“They’re undergoing an internal restructuring,” Bonnis said, “and I think their plan is to reopen with the renewal of Nordstrom and the entire block.”
No one from Quicksilver was available for comment by press time.
(Quicksilver continues to pay rent on its location at 820 Granville Street even though it has not been a store in more than a year | Photo: Glen Korstrom)
Bonnis Properties owns six buildings in the 800-block of Granville Street, including the Commodore Ballroom, which Bonnis said it bought around the turn of the millennium.
The company also owns half of the 700-block of Granville Street, between the Vancouver block building and south to the corner, where Future Shop is preparing to rebrand as Best Buy.
“We’re closing in on two decades of putting our focus on Granville Street, so it’s great to see it all come to fruition,” he said.
Bonnis independently owns the five-location Café Crepe chain that operates a restaurant under Future Shop as well as a second Granville Street bistro in the 800 block.
“We’re aware that there’s going to be a changing demographic in that area,” Bonnis said, pointing to a recent DVBIA study that compares Granville Street’s retail offerings to those in technology hubs across North America.
The DVBIA considers the area to be a technology hub because 700 Sony Pictures Imageworks workers recently moved into fifth-floor office space above Nordstrom. Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) plans to locate another 700 staff on the sixth and seventh floors of the building. About 150 Miller Thomson staff and others will work on the fourth floor.
The DVBIA found that technology hubs tend to have more independent coffee shops and healthy food options than Granville Street currently has.
“The likely demand for healthy food options identified by the DVBIA is bang on with what’s happening in most of western Europe and North America,” Bonnis said. “We’re considering tweaking our menu to reflect that, as it is the same feedback that we are getting chain-wide.”
New restaurants set to cater to influx of office tower workers
Restaurateurs are opening eateries and pondering renovations to cater to thousands of workers moving in to more than one million square feet of new office space in the central downtown peninsula.
Glowbal Group’s 17,000-square-foot Glowbal restaurant at the corner of Georgia and Seymour streets has been an “amazing” success since it opened August 19, according to owner Emad Yacoub, who spent about $100,000 on a packed launch party.
He expects the 400-seat high-end steak and seafood restaurant to be profitable on about $13 million in sales in its first year in part because of customers in the adjacent 488,000-square-foot Telus Garden office tower. In June, Telus Corp. (TSX:T) started moving 1,000 employees to the building at the corner of West Georgia and Richards streets; Amazon.com plans to locate 800 workers on site. Hundreds more will work for tenants such as Bull, Housser & Tupper.
(Glowbal Group owner Emad Yacoub said he spent $100,000 on his August 19 launch party for his new 17000-square-foot restaurant in the Telus Garden development | Photo: Glen Korstrom)
Yacoub said his second eatery in the development, the café, wine bar and tapas purveyor Nosh, has also been busy.
Nordstrom itself is getting in on the action, given that more than 1,500 employees are expected to work in office space above its department store.
Spokesman John Bailey said the company plans to install a full-service restaurant on its third floor as well as a cocktail lounge on the second floor. The store will also include an espresso bar.
An external elevator will take diners to the third-floor restaurant so it can operate even when the department store is closed.
Add the 1,000 workers who are expected to be in the under-construction, 250,000-square-foot Manulife building at the corner of Howe and Nelson streets and there is a significant critical mass for restaurateurs.
ThisIsBlueprint.com principal Bill Kerasiotis told BIV that he is considering renovating his Caprice eatery and bar on Granville Street near Nelson Street to reinstall a patio largely because the new Manulife building at 980 Howe Street will be one block away.
“Our other property on Granville Street is Venue, which is a live-music facility,” he said. “That venue would just not work for daytime activity. There’re just no facilities there for that.”
