Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Let's hope for a better scheme than the last...

For the second time today I had a call from the local media asking who might be the buyer of the Summerside Waterfront Mall and for the life of me I couldn't imagine... About 15 years ago we offered $6,700,000.00 for this property as we were working on a deal to expand the former Towers space and convert it to a larger Zellers but the local Crown Agency weren’t interested in working with us... we moved on to buy the Met Mall which we converted into a strip mall... shortly thereafter the retail market moved to North Granville Street and the Waterfront Mall slowly lost its appeal for National tenants most of whom moved to the North of the City... in 2006 Richard Fitzgerald a Dentist from Ireland bought the mall and produced one of the biggest hair brain schemes that ever crossed the Northumberland Strait in the form of 7 storey condos on top of the mall http://www.timbanks.ca/2009/08/hair-brain-idea-or-money-scam.html

I took another tour of this property on September 10th as I heard they were looking at seriously discounting the price... I was shocked at the vacancy rate which was pretty scary and you'd pretty much have to add a magician's shop to the tattoo parlour that's already there to make any sort of retail mall operations work there... but what would I know so I'd like to be the first to wish them luck on their new proposed venture as it's always great to see new investment with fresh vision coming to PEI... let’s hope it’s a better scheme than the last one put forward and that the deal goes through... here’s what the realtors were asking
http://waterfrontmallpei.com/ and I'd suggest that it went for significantly less...
Deal reached for Waterfront Mall
Journal Pioneer
Published on September 28th, 2010
Mike Carson
SUMMERSIDE – An offer has been made and accepted for the purchase of the Waterfront Mall in downtown Summerside.
Michael Poczynek, Century 21 Northumberland, said the offer was made over the weekend.
“We have for the last month been working with a party who I’m not going to reveal for his privacy, but we finally have an offer on the table,” he said. “They viewed the mall for the first time on the weekend so it’s sold pending their due diligence period.”
The offer is from an off-Island firm.
Mall Operations Manager Tina Mundy said she is optimistic about the mall’s future.
“It’s all very exciting and it will be very, very good for Summerside,” she said. “What he has shared with me is that the deal came across his desk. He decided to come and see what it was all about and he was really impressed with the mall. He had some great vision and he loved the location.”

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Last time someone bot the waterfront Basil & council went apeship and wanted to do all kind of nasties to the Silver Fox because they wouldn't suck up to the new owners & give up their parking.
Hopefully council learned something from their stupidity but I have my doubts.