Council will hear plan to sell Portage Place mall

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This article was published 03/07/2019 (1905 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Members of city council are getting a closed-door briefing Friday morning that involves a complicated purchase and resale of the downtown Portage Place shopping mall, the land it sits on and its underground parkade.

Councillors have been invited to the meeting at 8:30 a.m. on Friday, where Forks CEO Paul Jordan is expected to brief them on the developing situation.

The downtown mall is owned by Vancouver-based Peterson Group, which has been trying to sell the property for two years but the Free Press reported in August 2018 that interested buyers were scared off because the mall sits on land owned by North Portage Development Corporation, a development agency owned equally by the City of Winnipeg, and the governments of Manitoba and Canada.

The Portage Place mall was touted as the saviour of downtown Winnipeg when it was proposed but it’s had middling success and the mall’s value has tumbled. Portage Place opened in 1987 following the controversial expropriation of several small properties along the north side of Portage Avenue. It was built by Cadillac Fairview for $92 million but 10 years later it was sold for about $45 million and then sold again in 2005 to the Peterson Group for around $20 million.

North Portage Development Corp has generated about $3 million in revenue annually from the mall site, adjoining land leases and underground parkade, revenue that had been used to subsidize operations at The Forks.

The downtown mall would be considered prime real estate in most urban centres. The mall property was constructed with the provision for the addition of two towers on the east and west ends of the mall, which could be attractive to a developer.

However, the True North Square development south of Portage Avenue, which includes both residential and office towers and an adjoining hotel, may have robbed potential tenants for any new towers atop Portage Place.

Based on media reports, it appears North Portage Development Corp intends to buy Portage Place from the Peterson Group and then package the property along with the land and the underground parkade to another developer.

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca