More new businesses opened in the St. Albert Centre shopping mall in the past year than at any point since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the past 12 months, the mall added seven new tenants and pop-up stores, including Chinese fast food joint Famous Wok and kids’ clothing retailer Urban Kids.
“That’s about double the norm for this property,” said mall general manager Jillian Creech in an email. “We haven’t seen this much lease activity since pre-pandemic.”
In the same time window, two stores closed.
Creech thinks the uptick could be happening because retailers have recovered from the pandemic and are once again looking to expand their market.
For Katrina Petryshyn, owner of The Makers Keep, moving to the mall meant keeping her business in St. Albert.
The Makers Keep, a collective boutique store that sells Alberta- and Canada-made products, was in the Enjoy Centre for several years, but Petryshyn felt it was time to move on.
“I was spread a bit too thin,” she said.
She closed the store, one of four Makers Keep locations in the Edmonton region, back in January.
“Around the same time that we closed, the opportunity came up to open in St. Albert Centre,” she said. “My intent was not to close a location and add a new location. I just wanted to have one less store and be a little less busy. But knowing that there's a lot of other local businesses inside the St. Albert Centre was intriguing.”
She launched the new Makers Keep store in May. Things have been fairly busy, she said. But the Christmas shopping season will be the real test to determine whether her store remains in the mall long-term.
The mall, while not the cheapest option, does have a lot of foot traffic, she said.
“We want more of our regular St. Albert shoppers to come find us, because some of them, I don't think they know that we moved,” she said.
The mall’s location is convenient for her customers, she said. “We're happy to be there.”
St. Albert Centre may also be seeing more foot traffic.
In an email, Creech said mall visits are up 16 per cent in comparison to last year, while visit frequency is up 12.5 per cent and the amount of time visitors spend in the mall is up 16 per cent.
Sales per square foot have also increased to $534.
The Gazette asked for more details about how St. Albert Centre collects its data, but Creech said she could not provide that information.
Tony Karaja, a shopper who regularly visits the London Drugs in St. Albert Centre, said he has noticed the mall has been a bit busier.
He avoids online shopping and prefers in-person retailers like the mall because he’s “old school,” he said.
“I just like to see the actual product,” he said
He thinks it could be time for the mall to expand. “But I understand though too, that … a lot more people are shopping online than ever before, and maybe it's not feasible to build a bigger place.”
Shopper Ernestine Zuidema visits the mall every day.
“I meet nice people, and it makes me happy, and I live close by,” she said.
“I'm worried that some businesses might just fold up, because people tend to shop online,” she said. “I hope they just stay here and shop here.”
Retail sales in Canada dropped by 0.3 per cent in June, decreasing to $65.7 billion according to Statistics Canada’s most recent data.
Overall in the second quarter of the year, retail sales were down 0.5 per cent.
