Yet another icon – of sorts – in downtown Yellowknife is on the market. The lower Centre Square Mall building is available at an asking price of $8.35 million.
Avison Young, a Toronto commercial real estate firm, is administering the sale. The same company recently conducted a sale of office buildings and downtown parking lots by the Bromley family.
Only the lower half of the mall, owned by Slate Asset Management, is for sale. A floor plan shown in a PDF version of the listing establishes that the upper half of the mall – owned by a separate firm, Holloway – is not included.
The listing does, however, include the offices above the lower mall. Avison Young states that the Workers’ Safety and Compensation Commission, NWT government, City of Yellowknife and Tim Hortons are the major tenants. The city’s library and new visitor centre both call the lower mall home.
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According to Avison Young, the building’s current net annual income for its landlord is just over $1 million. The complex, built in 1990, has 81,512 square feet of leasable space.
The relationship between the upper and lower levels of the mall appears to have deteriorated in recent years. Where once residents could stroll from one end to the other, more recently a barrier has forced people to head outside and around to move between the two.
Yellowknife residents have long complained that Centre Square Mall as a whole – both the upper and lower levels – is an eyesore and a waste of what should be a critically important downtown space. Revitalizing the mall is considered key to revitalizing the city’s downtown, which is partly why the city chose to build its visitor centre in the space, hoping to attract more footfall and investment.
The mall’s occupancy rate is given by Avison Young as 68.59 percent.
While the date of the mall’s listing on the firm’s website is not clear, the PDF version of the listing bears a creation date of April 18 this year.
Yellowknife’s downtown A&W franchise, nestled in the upper mall, was recently also listed for sale, as was the Gold Range Hotel that sits opposite the mall.
