London-based McArthurGlen Group is hiring a 10-person leadership team to oversee Metro Vancouver’s first outlet mall in the lead-up to the centre’s spring 2015 launch.
The company, which is building a 240,000-square-foot first phase of the McArthurGlen Designer Outlet Vancouver Airport in partnership with the Vancouver International Airport Authority has previously had little presence in North America.
Its director of development, Joan Jove, has made dozens of trips to Vancouver from London in the past few years, but thus far the company’s only permanent North American presence has been a three-person sales office in New York.
“Brands that would be our tenants tend to be located in either Toronto or New York,” Jove told Business in Vancouver August 5 during a visit to Vancouver.
“We will be hiring a country manager to be in Vancouver to manage the centre, and we are in the process of recruiting a team.”
He added that tenants in McArthurGlen’s first North American mall will provide 650 jobs initially and another 350 jobs once a 140,000-square-foot Phase 2 is complete.
“It’s 100% guaranteed that we will build a Phase 2. It’s just a matter of time.”
However, Jove declined to say which tenants will lease space in the first phase of the mall’s 85 units, most of which are less than 2,000 square feet.
McArthurGlen’s European outlet malls showcase brands such as Burberry, Prada, Armani and Michael Kors. Jove said similar brands will be at the Richmond mall on the northeast corner of Sea Island, east of what was a 2,500-spot parking lot and directly north of the Templeton Canada Line station.
McArthurGlen traditionally opens its malls with about 80% of the space leased, Jove said, because some of the brands that it seeks as tenants prefer to see the mall built before committing to leases. That was the case when McArthurGlen opened its 20th and most recent mall north of Hamburg, Germany, more than a year ago. McArthurGlen is also developing malls in the south of France, Belgium and near Dusseldorf, Germany.
New financing from deep-pocketed partner Simon Property Group (SPG) could help McArthurGlen increase the pace of its mall development. Last year SPG (NYSE:SPG) bought an initial equity interest in the private McArthurGlen for €435 million.
“We looked at both Vancouver and Toronto and liked both cities,” Jove said. “We decided we liked Vancouver better, even though it has a smaller population, because there is a strong Asian demographic, a lack of [outlet mall] competition and a large tourist market.”
He explained that a large Asian population was attractive because many Asian shoppers are brand-conscious and like outlet mall shopping.
McArthurGlen’s Sea Island mall is two SkyTrain stations from the Vancouver International Airport, and the company’s plan is to make the mall an extension of the airport’s retail offerings.
TransLink offers free ridership between the three Sea Island SkyTrain stations in part because YVR contributed $300 million to the cost of building the Canada Line. Airport flight information screens will be prominent, and there will be free temporary lockers so people can store their luggage while shopping.
Nearby mall owners aren’t worried about the competition.
“We don’t have the same brands or type of tenant that you would see in their mall,” said Thomas Fung, who owns the 550,000-square-foot Aberdeen Centre, which is near the Aberdeen SkyTrain station two stops away from McArthurGlen’s project. “The impact on us is minimal.”
Fung recently developed Aberdeen Square as an extension to his mall.
Aberdeen Square, which opened in late 2013 and has a grand opening set for November 1, has 140,000 square feet of retail strata units and 100,000 square feet of strata office space.
