ESTEVAN — The Estevan Market Mall will close the central entrance for construction in the first week of January 2024. The construction is expected to last until late summer next year.
During that time, the entrance will be fully rebuilt to allow for a modern appearance and to accommodate a new food court with three or four tenants. The new public washrooms will also be located in the central part of the building.
While the construction continues, all businesses will operate within regular hours, with the two south-side entrances as well as the west entrance located by Sobeys and entrances through retailers open to the public.
The contract for the major renovation was awarded to Westridge Construction out of Regina in the late fall, said Martin Blair, managing director of First Aberdeen Properties Ltd., which purchased the mall in 2019.
"We wanted to make sure we had a good, strong general contractor. This is a sizable project, there's structural changes taking place to allow us to create this new access and the food court. So, we wanted to make sure we had a pretty competent general contractor that could start right away and get it done by the summer so that we minimize disruption as much as possible," Blair said.
The capital project will bring a five-year renovation plan to a conclusion right in time for the Estevan Market Mall's 50th anniversary.
"We've been putting things together for 2024 for quite a while now," Blair said in an interview with the Mercury and SaskToday. "We've done several renovations to the mall, and 2024 is probably going to be our most important year. We kicked off a five-year renovation program back in 2020, so 2024 is our fifth year and probably our biggest year, and certainly the most noticeable because we'll be constructing the new entrance and of course, the new food court and visitor washrooms all get done at the same time.
"The mall was constructed back in 1974, and so 2024 is our 50-year anniversary. So, we're having fun bringing the major portion of our five-year program to completion during 2024 and concurrently enjoying the 50-year anniversary of the mall. It's going to be a very busy and exciting year."
Plans for the 50th anniversary celebration will be announced in 2024, Blair said.
This year saw major work done at the north-side parking lot, which will be completed in 2024 with Genco Asphalt returning to the project as soon as it's technically possible. While the next year will be disruptive as well, it will bring in good results, Blair said.
"Here's the good news, they start in January, and we anticipate them to be substantially complete by early August. So, once you get through that period, everything will start to settle down. We'll polish things up on the north side, and we'll be able to get excited about new businesses going forward," Blair said.
He added that once major construction is completed, they will put more effort into attracting new tenants, not only for the food court but throughout the mall.
"First of all, we'll focus on the food court tenants … for the placement in the fall of 2024. The other thing is we want to keep up our pop-up store program, which allows local entrepreneurs to test their retail product a little bit without having to make any kind of financial commitment," Blair noted. "And then we'll release our leasing guys to start getting really aggressive, start to market [vacant spaces] as we start moving through 2024."
A lot of work has been done leading up to the major renovations of the central area, including structural as well as interior and exterior renovations, parking lot construction and more. With the development of the south-side parking, the mall turned into a more modern and convenient 360-degree approach, which attracted some businesses like Global Golf Plus and allowed the mall to bring a Tesla Supercharger station to Estevan.
"It was a good first step. And it's only going to help us as we go through this renovation on the north side by having those additional accesses," Blair said.
"The Estevan mall has basically been a fixture for most residents forever," Blair said. "When we bought the mall in 2019, we knew we had to undertake some significant renovations, otherwise the mall was going to struggle. We wanted to make sure that we completed this five-year renovation program so that the mall had a good chance to be healthy and move forward for the next 50 years.
"When we look at the next 50 years going forward, one of the things that we want to do with the character of the mall is make it more community orientated. So basically, that means we're not really chasing the big, big tenants as much … we're looking at a lot of those operations, like a hair salon, things that are more local and entrepreneurial. And it'll add to the community character of the mall," Blair said.
"And all the things that we're doing are physically supporting that. The work with the intersection with the city out front was to make it safer for people to use a pedestrian sidewalk system. We spent a lot of money this year putting that sidewalk system from that intersection down to the front of the mall. And there are all these little things, including the 360-degree access, things so that the community can start to blend in.
"And part of that is to provide some space for smaller retailers, like the 1,000-square-foot, the 1,500-square-foot kind of retailer that is more boutique, and we want that to be part of our fibre in the mall as we go forward."
Blair thanked the community and businesses for being understanding during the construction and said the mall plans on continuing with development in the years to come.
"The residents and all our visitors over the last four years, and certainly over this year, have been very, very understanding. We put some pretty big holes in that parking lot, we changed a lot of stuff, and everybody seems to work around it. And we're very, very thankful and appreciative for that," Blair said.
"In 2025, we're going to continue to be doing improvements to the mall, a lot of it will be on the south side. We still have a bunch of vacant land there, that's going to allow us to do some potential development. And of course, we ultimately want to do that second-floor business centre. We already started a little preliminary work, but the main thrust of it will start to happen in 2025 and 2026.
"So there still will be renovations and improvements, but they won't be as disruptive as what we've experienced during this five-year program that's taking us into 2024."
